An Ancient Guardian
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: Imagine a Shinji Ikari that had been through a terrible ordeal that left him unable to walk or run, where everyone that knows of his parents are either cruel to him or ignore his plight, where he just wants to give up on living a life where he can feel accepted by people. And one day, upon stepping into an antique shop, he comes across a statue with a history, and learns of Exodia.
1. Prologue

Creation began on 04-06-15

Creation ended on 04-11-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An Ancient Guardian

A/N: The idea just came to mean while working on _Different from You_. Another story in a series of stories from different perspectives, alternate scenarios, and possible outcomes. A bit of a spoiler in this story is that you may see or hear of items from other stories.

He wheeled into an antique shop and looked at the old items that looked like they couldn't be found anywhere else in the world…unless you looked for them online. On the shelves, he noticed a Kama sickle on display, a sword, a recurve bow, even a gauntlet that looked like it had an eye on its backside, looking at the world.

As he past by an antique bottle, an ancient of a man dressed in a green kimono stepped out of the back of the shop and saw him.

"It's been three years since a young face was in my shop," he expressed. "What brings you here?"

"I just…thought I'd look around," Shinji uttered; in truth, he just wanted to forget about the letter he had gotten in the mail from his estranged father, who didn't even come to see him three years ago when someone that hated his mother decided to try and kill him in a hit and run, crippling him and depriving him of the use of his legs forever.

"Well, feel free to look around," the shopkeeper expressed. "You may find something you like…or you may find something that likes you. Strange things have happened in the years prior to the dawn of the new century."

So Shinji wandered around the shop, seeing many other things that seemed out of place for an antique shop. There were figurines that looked like they were collectible, action figures and resembled the four beasts of Asian mythology, with the dragon, while not blue or any variation of the color, fascinated him. Then, he saw a figurine shaped like a little girl…with a round tummy standing beside a white horse with a unicorn's horn on its head.

"_The damage to his spine was devastating,"_ a doctor had informed his aunt and uncle while he had been in and out of consciousness. _"He'll never be able to walk again."_

"_It was a woman that hated his mother for causing her boyfriend's death years ago,"_ his aunt had expressed to the police.

"_He's bad luck,"_ his uncle had expressed his opinion on Shinji. _"All three of them are nothing but trouble to everyone."_

And the worst had come after he went back to school, being troubled by the other students and ignored by the teachers, even when forced to the ground and barely able to get back into his wheelchair.

Suddenly, he looked over into the far back of the shop and saw a large statue with an Egyptian theme to its appearance. It looked like its head and torso were disproportionate to its arms and legs, which had chains shackled to them on manacles. But what caught Shinji's attention were the bands in its opened hands, as though this statue were presenting them to people.

They were manacles, to be accurate, with an eye engraved upon them with series of puzzle-like lines surrounding them, and the edges were rounded.

"I take it you've found something you like?" The shopkeeper asked him, returning from his inventory, and seeing him examining the bands.

"Um, no. I mean, I…" Shinji was caught off guard by the elder. "What is this statue called?"

"He is called Exodia, the Forbidden One," he answered the boy.

"The Forbidden One? Why is he called that?"

"According to Egyptian lore lost through time, Exodia was once the guardian to the Egyptian lord Osiris, the God of the Underworld. However, one day, Exodia was unable to protect the lord from his brother, and was condemned to the same fate as the lord. But Osiris was merciful to Exodia, and permitted him to return to life, but would be bound to a sacred ritual required to summon him and ensure protection to those that summoned him back. Since then, Exodia has been known as the Forbidden One because once he has been summoned and fulfills his duty to protect the one that summoned him, he doesn't appear again unless he is summoned. To honor him, a pair of gold bands, these bands, in fact, were forged from what was left of Exodia's original body and infused with his spiritual energies and bestowed upon those seeking his protection."

"That's…quite a tale," Shinji expressed, and then the shopkeeper took the manacles out of Exodia's hands and gave them to Shinji. "Huh?"

"I can see that you admire the manacles," the shopkeeper said to him. "Accept them as an offering. Something tells me you were meant to have these."

-x-

SMASH! Unit-01 was slammed against the building behind it by the Third Angel, incapacitating the young man that was forced by his cold-hearted father to pilot.

Inside the plug, his manacles, which he put on prior to getting off the train and arriving at Tokyo-2, started to glow in the darkness, casting an eerie light upon their wearer.

-x-

"…We can't eject the plug!" Maya Ibuki informed Misato Katsuragi. "We've lost all contact with the Eva!"

On the monitors showcasing the purple Eva, something began to appear in the air between it and the Angel, casting the buildings and night sky in a golden glow.

"What's going on now?" Ritsuko Akagi demanded.

The light then solidified and assumed the form of a large, hulking humanoid, brownish-gold, almost like it had been burnt or something, almost armor-like in its appearance, dressed in a brown loincloth or kilt, and wearing shackles with chains on its wrists and ankles. Another detail that stood out on the creature was what looked like an Egyptian-themed mask it was wearing because of the the chin and cobra it possessed.

"What is that?" Makoto Hyuga questioned, confused by the presence of this being.

The Third Angel fired its energy beams at the humanoid, causing an explosion, but when the smoke cleared, the humanoid was still standing…and now holding in its palms a glowing sphere, which it then fired off at the Angel.

"Iiiiieee!" The Angel shrieked when the blast hit it, obliterating it from the face of the Earth with such force that said planet moved a bit that the people could feel it.

"The Angel's gone," went Sub-Commander Kozo Fuyutsuki, and the humanoid disappeared soon after.

But Gendo Ikari was unamused; in his scenario, Unit-01 was supposed to defeat the Angel, but instead the invader was dealt with by an unknown, and he hated unknowns that didn't fit well with his plans.

To be continued…

A/N: Here's my prototype chapter. I hope it gets some traction.


	2. Hope for the Future

Creation began on 04-16-15

Creation ended on 04-17-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An Ancient Guardian: Hope for the Future

A/N: After a while, we'll see how this shall progress.

Shinji awoke from a haze, seeing the white ceiling above him. He thought what had happened to him was some sort of dream, that everything that happened was just a fabrication of his mind…until he realized two things that made him think differently about his recent experience. One was that he was wearing the Manacles of Exodia, and the other was that he couldn't feel his legs, just like when he awoke in the hospital and was informed that he may never walk again.

"Kami," he sighed. "Another unbearable ceiling."

-x-

"…The air's not as warm as it was yesterday," Ritsuko Akagi told Misato Katsuragi, as they monitored the investigation of the Third Angel attack, gathering Unit-01 and trying to collect whatever samples they could find of the Angel.

"What do you think that was that defeated the Angel?" Misato asked the faux-blond woman as Unit-01 was being airlifted off the street after being separated from the damaged building.

"Whatever it was, it was powerful enough to vaporize an Angel. We should be getting satellite images that will tell us if there were any secondary effects to what happened last night."

"Why would there be?"

"Better to be safe than sorry."

-x-

Strapping himself to his wheelchair, Shinji wheeled around the room he was in and approached the window to look outside. There was nothing but an artificial scenery of trees and a lake. Then, he turned his chair around and went over to the door to leave the room.

The halls were long and as unbearable as his room had been. Even with the few plants that were seen, there was too much of a measure of staleness in this facility.

"You're awake," he heard a male voice nearby a counter, and he saw an elderly man in a grayish uniform. "How are you feeling?"

Shinji didn't speak, but his hands gripping the handrests made the man understand that the young boy was getting tense.

Suddenly…

SCREECH! Shinji turned his chair around wheeled out of the hall, back to his room, wanting to be alone right now.

-x-

"…The Sub-Commander met with Shinji," Ritsuko told Misato.

"Oh? And how was he?" Misato responded.

"He…demonstrated a complete lack of communication."

"Well, he wasn't exactly met with kind words or sympathy when he got here. You read his file, right? He's been targeted by other kids and ignored by the adults."

-x-

At least in his solitude, he felt safe. In his solitude, there nobody around to hurt him or say bad things about him. The only thing that sucked about it was that the limits to his mobility, that whenever he was alone, he couldn't really go anywhere without there being restrictions. He could've used his upper body to move all he wanted, but he had his limits.

In the meantime, as he stared out the window, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki was in a conversation with Commander Ikari.

"…There is some doubt that he'll pilot again, Ikari," Fuyutsuki told him in his office. "I don't blame him, though."

"There's no one else that can pilot the Eva," Gendo responded to this possibility. "So long as they survive, that is what they'll do."

"But what good is your son…if he can't even walk, anymore? The medical staff examined his injury, and they concluded that the damage to his spine was irreparable, that it was made worse by further injuries he acquired over the last three years after he had recovered enough to be discharged from the hospital he was admitted to."

"Whether he can walk or not is irrelevant," Gendo expressed; no matter how anyone tried to say anything about what had happened or what could happen, his mind was already made up about his son.

-x-

Misato stopped by the medical ward to see Shinji, hoping he would speak to her now. As much as she didn't want to admit it, she was shocked to see him in a wheelchair; she probably would've looked the other way if he had a cast on one of his arms or legs and required crutches, but the sight of him in a wheelchair was disturbing. And then, there was the fact that he was, more or less, forced into the Eva against his will by his father, who didn't even express any concern over his son's inability to walk or defend himself from harm against the Angel.

"Hey there, Shinji," she greeted the boy who sat by the window. "How have you been?"

But he didn't respond to her; he shut her out like he did with everyone else.

Until…

"What do you want?" He spoke up.

"Just wanting to see if you're well enough to be discharged," she answered him.

"What, then?"

That was the question. Unfortunately, what NERV didn't anticipate for any measure of circumstance was the possibility of a physically-disabled person requiring the use of a wheelchair. There were halls, but nearly every way in and out of NERV HQ wasn't wheelchair-accessible…and the Third Child's legs didn't function for him at all.

"We're sure to figure out something," she tried instead.

Shinji never turned to face her, but responded, "I don't expect anything to change. Whatever happens just happens. The wind blows, buildings are either built or demolished, people come and go, and take what they will, leaving everything…and everyone else behind."

Misato hadn't expected him to speak with such fatalism, like nothing really mattered to him. But she had to take into consideration that after his accident, his outlook on his life had to have been altered by his experience around people that either harmed him or ignored him. And, probably after arriving to NERV and his cold reunion with his father, he had decided to view everyone at the agency with no intention of reaching out to them…or even the hope of them trying to reach out to him.

-x-

"…And we're to understand that you made your son pilot Unit-01?" A man bathed in green light asked Gendo during the meeting between him and the Committee. "And we're also to understand that he's disabled, being that he's confined to a wheelchair?"

"It would explain the reason why Unit-01 was unable to perform," a man bathed in red light expressed in disgust. "The subject in question no longer possesses the mental capacity to even think of walking."

"It was an unforeseeable circumstance," Gendo claimed. "With no other options at the time, we had no choice but to use the Third Child."

"That's your excuse, Ikari," a man bathed in blue light expressed. "Is it also your excuse that the unknown entity that attacked and defeated the Angel last night also affected the planet's axis, restoring it and pushing the Earth further away from the moon, causing the ocean tides to decrease to what passes for a natural level of pre-Second Impact waters?"

It was true that the recent discovery of the planet being further away from the moon (and the sun, in addition) caused the planet to undergo several changes to cope with the new distance, including the restoration of the planet's axis. With the reduction of the global water level, coastal areas and islands could be reclaimed and restored, and with the restoration of the axis, Japan (among other places) would see the potential return of the seasons that were lost fifteen years ago.

"What about the Instrumentality Project?" A man bathed in white light, wearing a visor, asked, getting to the point of their meeting with Gendo. "Can this still be achieved?"

"It is unknown at this point," Gendo answered; even he wasn't sure, though he was hoping to ensure that it would be carried out.

-x-

After bringing him his clothes and stepping out of his room, Misato waited for Shinji to change. She heard the rustling of a shirt being removed and replaced…and then heard wheels squeaking. A few minutes later, she heard sounds of struggling, like Shinji was attempting to get back in his chair.

The door opened, and the boy came out, his shirt rustled, and a small scrape on his left cheek.

Misato really felt sorry for him; it must've been difficult for him to do many things by himself, since it was next to impossible for him to trust people without trying to hurt him on purpose.

"Um, this way, please," she pointed the way out, and he followed her.

What also made her curious of him were those manacles he had on. According to the medical staff, an attempt was made to remove them, but they wouldn't come off his wrists…and they seemed to made of pure gold, which, if you found the right buyer, could've been worth a considerable amount to any that might've wanted them.

They reached an elevator and waited for it to open up. When it did, Shinji saw Gendo…and immediately turned around and wheeled away.

"Um, Shinji?" Misato questioned, going after him, while the elevator doors closed.

Shinji stopped by a hall of barbed wired windows, relieved to be away from his father.

-x-

"…So they don't want to live together?" Ritsuko asked one of the Bridge Bunnies, Makoto Hyuga, showing clinical concern over the Third Child and his lack of a residence. "Are you sure?"

"You were there when they saw each other," he responded. "The commander was unsympathetic and demanding, and the boy was unable to turn away without falling into the pool of the cage and drowning. What didn't make any sense any sense was that he hadn't received a call from his aunt or uncle after he got here."

Now Ritsuko was curious about this.

-x-

A motel. Misato Katsuragi had to check (and leave) Shinji in a motel. She started to feel even more sympathy for the boy because there weren't many places within the city that were built with accessibility for those that use wheelchairs in mind. At least the motel was just down the street from where she lived.

"It was the only place I could find that was wheelchair-accessible," she told Ritsuko over the phone while in the bathtub. "After what he's been through, I don't think he'll pilot again."

"So…what now?"

"Well, Section Two is watching the motel, but who knows for sure? Shinji seems like he's given up on living and trying to be helped. He looks at you, but it's like he's judging you at the same time, suspicious of your intentions."

At that moment, both thought back to the attempted battle between Unit-01 and the Third Angel…and the utter uselessness that Shinji demonstrated inside the plug. All he had to do was think about walking, but the Eva's first step resulted in the cybernetic organism falling to the street below. Then, the Angel picked him up and damaged the head. This clearly showed that the Third Child had no capacity for any thoughts revolving around walking, even if he could think about walking.

"If he were suicidal, he would've killed himself a long time ago," Ritsuko expressed. "Maybe he just doesn't know who to trust, anymore."

"Or he simply views people that are able to walk as being devious."

-x-

Laying on the bed in the motel room, Shinji looked up at another unbearable ceiling, pondering what could happen to him now. He truly hated his father's contempt over him (and he never even did anything wrong), why he had been requested to come to Tokyo-3, and how he had nowhere to go (not that he would dare go back to his ludicrous aunt and uncle's again).

_What point is there to living when everything hurts?_ He wondered, and then looked at his manacles. _Did such a guardian known as Exodia truly exist several millennia ago?_

Then, he drifted off to sleep, unaware that he was being watched by someone other than a group of men in black suits stationed in an unmarked van outside his motel room.

He never even heard the sound of chains rattling on the floor or noticed the glowing, soul-piercing red eyes that never took their gaze off of him.

To be continued…

A/N: Well, here's the second chapter. Please, review or PM me.


	3. Shinji's evaluation

Creation began on 04-18-15

Creation ended on 04-19-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An Ancient Guardian: Shinji's evaluation

It had only been a week since Shinji had arrived to Tokyo-3, but the planet had already been on a path to an actual rebuild after the revelation of former landmasses and coastal cities being salvageable and habitable once more. And all Shinji heard about those places were that they had buildings with wheelchair accessibility.

"…Shinji," a male voice uttered to the paraplegic boy, trying to get his attention. "Shinji Ikari?"

"Hmm?" The boy returned his scattered attention to the man he was scheduled to see for an evaluation by NERV.

"I asked you how you were feeling since your arrival to Tokyo-3," the therapist repeated.

"What's the point of answering?" Shinji asked him back. "Nothing has really changed for me. Nothing ever changes for me. Nothing has changed for me since that day I was reduced to crawling."

"What about your reunion with your father?"

"What reunion? It wasn't a reunion… Reunions are supposed to be positive, but there's no such thing as a positive reunion. Everything's just a triviality in a long list of trivialities. Nothing else matters. No one else matters."

The therapist then made mental notes about this child…and the severity of his damaged psyche.

-x-

"Well?" Ritsuko Akagi asked the therapist after the session with Shinji ended.

"I'm completely uncomfortable with labeling a fourteen-year-old paraplegic a sociopath," the man expressed, "but his affect was very dim, like he just accepted that nothing good will happen for him ever since he lost the use of his legs…and…I only got a chill down my spine only once before."

"From where?" Misato asked him.

"From people that have been over-medicated and received the wrong counseling in the past."

"Over-medicated? But how could he be over-medicated? Better yet, how could not receive the right counseling in the past?"

"We'd need to review his medical records after his accident and speak with professionals that may have worked with him during his rehab."

-x-

Gendo, just to keep his hands deprived of any concern with the Third Child, approved of reviewing the boy's medical records so that he could work on adapting the Human Instrumentality Project to suit his own needs. If the Committee's predictions on the Angels' next attempt at arriving to Tokyo-3 were accurate, it would be in another two weeks. By then, the Third Child would have been adjusted to his life as an Evangelion pilot.

"…This isn't right," the therapist revealed, looking at Shinji's past medical records. "After his rehab, he received no official counseling to cope with his disability."

"And this chart says he's been prescribed dozens of antipsychotic drugs and other pills that he shouldn't be taking at all," added Ritsuko; despite the boy's current behavior, Shinji didn't strike her as either psychotic or schizophrenic.

"I asked him about those pills he had with him, and all he said that they were for his mild pain in his lower back," Misato explained.

"Then he doesn't know that they're not for pain," the therapist revealed. "He's been lied to and medicated with pills that aren't helping him."

"But that doesn't make any sense. Who'd want to do this to him? And why?"

"Can he recover?" Ritsuko questioned.

"If you take him off the pills, maybe, but there's a chance the damage done to him is irreversible. He's been taking them for three years."

-x-

He could've gone to a park that was in the city, but he didn't want to be around people. Instead, he just requested that he be taken back to his motel suite and be left alone. In all honesty, the sight of people able to walk and run were no longer his cup of tea, and he didn't want to be the source of any gossip that only caused him further potential to be harmed. For Shinji, a person that couldn't use his legs was always an easy target.

-x-

"So, he's been given unnecessary medication disguised as painkillers for the last three years?" Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki questioned, being informed of this major disservice and injustice that was done to Shinji.

"Based on what was discovered in his medical records, all this malpractice points to his aunt and uncle," explained Ritsuko to him. "They had the doctors prescribing him the mind-altering drugs and lied to him about what they were for."

"But why would they do this to him?" That was what Fuyutsuki wanted to know.

"We'd have to ask them," Ritsuko expressed, "and we need to give the Third Child a further evaluation, not just a mental one, but a physical, as well."

-x-

"…In other news, with the global water reduction, we may see a plan in progress to reclaim and rebuild the original Tokyo," a woman said on the news. "Along with the reestablishment of the Japanese capital…"

Click. Shinji flipped through the channels of the small television, but every channel was the same to him, saying nothing about nothing.

"Shinji…" He looked away and towards the door, thinking he had heard a female voice, but he saw no one present.

Then, he returned his blank expression to the television channels…until he fell asleep in his chair.

-x-

"…So how he's medicated is no longer our concern," went Shinji's maternal uncle, over the phone, to Gendo.

"It is if you've given him mind-altering drugs and told him they were for his pain," Gendo retorted. "Do you have any idea of the damage you may have inflicted upon the boy?"

"Hey, he's not our problem, anymore. We wanted nothing to do with him, just as we wanted nothing to do with you! You forced your kid on us! Don't forget that! You sent for him, and we gave him back, so that makes his problems your problem!"

Then, the call disconnected, leaving Gendo mildly enraged at what his wife's relatives deliberately did to the Third Child.

Unfortunately, the call was on loudspeaker, so he, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, Ritsuko Akagi and Misato Katsuragi heard everything that had been between the two men.

The cold revelation: Shinji HAD been given mind-altering drugs and lied to about them being painkillers for three years, and even if he could be treated for their effects, the damage was likely irreversible up to the present. And the worst part of it was that his aunt and uncle fed him the pills just so that they wouldn't have to put up with his issues.

"So, now what?" Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki questioned Gendo.

"Reevaluate the Third Child, immediately," he ordered.

"Yes, sir," said Ritsuko in response, which meant that Misato or the Section Two agents tasked with watching the boy would have to bring him back to NERV for treatment.

Ring, ring! Misato's phone rang, and she answered it.

"Yes?" She spoke up. "What is it?"

"The motel the Third Child was checked into has been set on fire!" One of the agents that was supposed to be watching the boy informed her.

"What?!"

-x-

It was only half an hour after he fell asleep, but Shinji remained unconscious…and his motel suite started to fill up with smoke and fire.

"Shinji Ikari! Shinji Ikari!" The agents that were trying to get to him called out his name, but to no avail. "Shinji Ikari!"

SCORCH! The door to his room was engulfed by the flames, forcing the agents to get back.

Cough, cough. Shinji started coughing, and awoke to the sight of smoke and fire, as though he had been shown a glimpse of what Hell was supposed to look like.

Crash! He looked up and a burning piece of the ceiling and flooring from the motel room above his fell onto him, knocking him to the ground.

"Urgh!" He groaned, now trapped by his wheelchair, a burning piece of wood, and surrounded by fire. _So, this is how my life ends? I get burnt beyond recognition?_

To be continued…

A/N: Sorry to leave you hanging, but I need to leave you hanging, wondering what will happen next. What do you think will happen next? Anyone?


	4. No trace

Creation began on 04-20-15

Creation ended on 04-21-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An Ancient Guardian: No trace

The motel was in ruins, and by the time the fire department came to minimize the damage, the building was beyond recognition and reduced to rubble. The cause of the fire that took the building was a cigarette in a trashcan that had been deliberately set by an arguing couple…and the girlfriend left the boyfriend to suffer…along with the additional lives of at least seven other people that had been in the motel. It had only been seven…due to the mysterious fact that the inhabitant in the room that had been occupied by Tokyo-3's sole, wheelchair-bound individual wasn't found. Not even a burnt body was found where the wheelchair used to be before it was found.

"We searched the entire room after we found the wheelchair," a firefighter informed Misato. "We didn't find any kid."

"Are you sure?" She asked him, needing to be sure.

"We're sure. We checked twice. All we found was the wheelchair."

_Then__…__where could he be?_

-x-

The sounds of a waterfall awoke Shinji, and he found himself in a damp cave behind a curtain of water.

"Where…am I?" He spoke up.

"You're safe," a female voice answered him, and he turned to his left, seeing a person that looked as though they didn't belong.

It was a woman, but dressed in a flowing, greenish-yellow gown with a silver top. Her skin was bluish and her hair was a brownish-blond, topped by a silver, crown-like piece similar to the silver top on her gown. And her eyes were the goldest he'd ever seen.

Beside her on the right was another woman, similar to herself in appearance, but almost the complete opposite. This one's green gown was darker, and with a gold top instead of silver. Her skin was darker than brownish-red, like she had gotten an extensive tan and was now unable to be in the sun without hurting her skin, and her hair was either bluish-purple or a dark violet, topped by a gold version of the other woman's crown-like piece. And her eyes were silver, opposite of the blue-skinned woman.

The darker woman approached him and offered him a bowl full of a hot liquid.

"Here, drink this," she told him. "It's a special herbal remedy."

He raised his arms up and accepted the bowl.

"Who…who are you two?" He asked them.

"I am the Elf of Darkness," the dark woman introduced herself to him. "Or the Dark Elf, for short. This is my sister, the Mystical Elf."

Sipping the remedy up, the boy felt a little better, and then asked an imposing question.

"You're twins?" He asked them; this question was based solely on their similar appearances.

They looked at each other and then back at him.

"Yes," the Mystical Elf answered him. "We're twins."

"We just don't look alike," the Dark Elf expressed, making sure the boy understood why they looked the way they did.

Shinji resumed his consumption of the remedy…and had to admit to himself that it tasted better than the medication he had been on after he lost the use of his legs.

-x-

"…In addition to the reckless endangerment over the malpractice issue, the Third Child is in the wind," Ritsuko informed Gendo, pooling over what they knew and had on the boy. "The fire department and Section Two were unable to find him or his body in the ruins of the motel."

"How could a paraplegic just disappear from a motel without being noticed?" Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki questioned. "That's impossible."

"And Section Two reported that after the Third Child returned to his motel room, nobody either came or left that room," Misato added in.

"Could he have been faking his disability?" Fuyutsuki suggested.

"Not possible," said Ritsuko. "He had no mobility in his legs, as he was paralyzed from the waist down. All nerve signals from his brain to his lower extremities were nonexistent, and his other mental faculties were limited. Even if he could've gotten away, his only functional limbs are his arms, and you can only move on those for so long."

"The firefighters, perhaps?"

"They swore that they didn't see any kid matching the Third Child's description," Misato told him.

"Where could he have possibly gone?"

-x-

"…Exodia? You mean, that statue of the hulking figure I saw in that antique shop?" Shinji asked the elves, when they mentioned the golden bands on his wrists.

"That's right," the Mystical Elf expressed. "Exodia is the reason you're alive, and the very reason life will return to the planet. Exodia is a powerful guardian to whoever possesses the bands that were infused with his life force and spiritual energies. To face Exodia is face the inescapable path that leads only to one's own doom."

"So, then…that creature I was sent out to face when I arrived in Tokyo-3, that monster the people were calling an Angel… Its defeat was because of Exodia?" Shinji questioned; he had no memory of the fight between Unit-01 and the Angel (and right now, he was sure he didn't want to remember what happened, just as there were other things he didn't want to remember, now that he had a clearer mind).

"You were placed in danger," went the Dark Elf in response. "Your life was on the line, and Exodia was summoned to protect that who now matters most."

"Me?"

"Yes. You."

Shinji looked at his wrists, at the manacles, unsure of whether Exodia truly existed or not, just as he was unsure if he really existed in the past.

"He has protected you from an early demise twice already," the Mystical Elf said.

"My motel room was on fire," Shinji recalled, and remembered seeing a large, hulking figure reach out to him, pulled him from the fire. "I was…trapped and on the floor…and then he came."

"Only those that wear the Manacles of Exodia may receive his help when their lives are placed in danger that has no simple solution," the elves told him.

Suddenly, the water in the pool where Shinji was by started to bubble…and a new figure floated from out of it in front of him. It looked like a young girl with webbed, fin-like ears, skin as blue as the water itself, and had a petite, lithe body befitting that of a young girl.

Unfortunately, for Shinji, the boy had to turn his head away from her because of one problem: The girl was exposed on every inch of her body, leaving nothing to the imagination. But fortunately, as a young and petite girl, her body was no different from a girl's that hadn't begun the process of puberty.

"Hi, there," the girl greeted them. "I'm the Water Element, here to help you."

Shinji looked to the elves and gestured with his eyes that he was uncomfortable with the new visitor's nudity and was pleading that they do something about it.

"Could you please be a dear and cover yourself, Water Elemental," the Dark Elf requested for him. "We have a gentleman who's been imprisoned within his own mind and is just learning to be free once more, and we can't have him being accused of being perverse."

The girl made of spiritually-enriched water looked at the boy and realized why he was so uncomfortable with her presence, and caused the water around her chest and waist to generate into mist, obscuring the areas that made him look away from her.

"Is this better?" She asked, and Shinji looked at her, breathing a breath of relief.

"Thank you," he praised her.

She then approached him, walking on the water with ease, and reached out to his legs with her right hand, a small body of mist generating around her fingers.

"Oh, dear," she expressed. "There's no trace of life within your legs. What happened to you?"

"I was in an accident," he answered her. "I was hit by a car, and I couldn't walk, anymore."

-x-

"…Unit-01 should be fully repaired within another day," Ritsuko informed Gendo, who ignored her in his office. "I shall have the workers accelerate the repairs."

It wasn't that he wasn't interested in his precious Unit-01, but without a compatible pilot for it (excluding Rei Ayanami) he would be unable to progress on his objective, should it ever be attempted any further. And the latest weather reports indicated that Japan was due for its first snowy period since Second Impact (even though there shouldn't have been any factors that supported the conditions for snow to build up).

_Ever since that unknown appeared and defeated the Angel, everything's changed, _he thought, still wondering where the Third Child could have disappeared off to without being seen or heard.

To be continued…

A/N: Well, now there have been three more creatures associated with _Yu-Gi-Oh!_ Do leave a review, please, and I'll get back to you in due time.


	5. Payback

Creation began on 04-21-15

Creation ended on 04-23-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An Ancient Guardian: Payback

A smile formed on his face. It was a short and hardening trial that he endured, but the end result was more than worth it. For Shinji, it was a day well spent with these three ladies that he learned were agents of Exodia and from time periods after his own.

His feet, once a pair of deteriorated limbs after his injury that left him crippled, were now restored to him, enabling him to stand firmly on his own like before. He took a step forward, a little uneasy at first, but that was to be expected from one that had just regained his mobility in his lower extremities.

"Heh…heh-heh! Heh-ha-ha-ha!" He laughed, putting one foot in front of the other in the cave in front of the Mystical and Dark Elves and Water Element. "Look at me! I'm walking!"

The elves and water spirit clapped in applause for him.

-x-

By the time a week had come and gone, Tokyo-3 and much of Japan itself had become consumed by the season of winter, despite it being the season of summer. And while this allowed for most people, children included, to embrace the feeling that the Earth was returning to normal with each passing day, this only made NERV suspicious of these happenings that had to be the result of that strange creature attacking the Third Angel in place of Unit-01.

"It makes the city seem so peaceful right now," went Ritsuko to Misato, taking a break from work in the cafeteria.

"Sometimes, I wonder if he's ever known such a thing," Misato expressed, referring to Shinji, as all of NERV failed to find him after the motel fire.

"We didn't know, Misato. You didn't know."

"I left him in that place…because it was convenient and wheelchair-accessible. And then we found out his relatives did things to him that made him less than convenient to them. Instead of trying to help rehabilitate him, they fed him drugs that maimed his brain, his conscious. Instead of getting him therapy, they ignore whatever happened to him because of others around him. You remember what his aunt said about him? About one less child like Gendo and Yui's son, one less problem. So she had him sterilized. Sterilized! They didn't even consider if that was the right choice."

"People make hard decisions during hard times."

"No, they didn't make hard decisions during any hard times. They only did this so that he could be unable to rebel or do anything that they would've viewed as trouble."

"Well, they're paying for the malpractice and child abuse and neglect. The doctors that prescribed the drugs have lost their medical licenses and the aunt and uncle will be in jail for five years while their son is in a juvenile detention center for his role in the abuse."

"I'm sure that Shinji will appreciate this…if he ever turns up."

-x-

Standing in front of the snow-bound Tokyo-3, a truly-rehabilitated Shinji Ikari felt ready to take on whatever stood between him and his goals. Wearing a winter-themed coat to protect himself from the snow, along with a scarf wrapped around the bottom half of his face, the young man stepped into the city limits.

"So, this is snow," he uttered to himself, seeing children playing around on the streets. "It's better than the summer days."

High above the city skyscrapers, a pair of strange birds flew over, unseen by mortal eyes. One was a bluish-green bird with a long tail, while the other looked like a mechanical version of a bird that could rival an organic one.

-x-

"What's going on?!" Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki asked the personnel on the bridge in Central Dogma, seeing the majority of the monitors and holographic screens occupied by static.

"We don't know!" One of them responded. "It's some sort of jamming!"

"An Angel?" Ritsuko suspected.

"Negative," went Maya Ibuki, "there's no blue pattern detected."

Suddenly, as soon as the electronic disturbance started, it ended, and everything went back to normal.

"What was that all about?" Misato questioned Ritsuko.

-x-

The Ashi Lake had completely frozen over in the week that snow fell over the city, and as Shinji leaned against the safety railing, he recalled things that his last near-death experience showed him, but was unable to react to them due to the effects of his old medication. He recalled a dream-like vision of giant harpies without souls engorging on a red giant with four eyes, and then saw those harpies attack the very Eva he had once been in.

_Evangelions,_ he thought bitterly, resentful of the revelations of his near-death experience showed him. _They are nothing more than the harbingers of misfortune and pain, abominations created by people that dare to play the role of our divine masters to disgrace them and break from the boundaries they set for us to keep us in line. Only the divine may change the way we think and act. We must know our place and limits and accept that we cannot replace our masters unless permitted to._

"Grrr," he heard a growling noise nearby and turned to see what it was.

It was a white wolf with glowing eyes.

Shinji should've reacted with fear for his life, however, he wasn't afraid of the beast at all. He approached it and petted its head, earning a purring from it in return.

"Could you show me where I need to go?" He asked it, and it led him away.

-x-

"…So with the Third Child declared MIA, we'll have to request that the Second Child be sent here ahead of schedule until we can find a Fourth Child," Ritsuko told Gendo in his office.

"And are we certain that he could not be found?" Gendo asked her.

"We're certain," she answered back.

"Very well, then."

RING, RING! His desk phone rang, and he picked up.

"Yes?" He questioned. "I see. Let him through."

As he hung up, he looked at Ritsuko with a look of disappointment on her part.

"We may not need to request the Second Child after all," he told her, "as the Third Child has turned up within the city."

Ritsuko became confused. Confused because Section Two was unable to find the Third Child, and then became worried because this was bound to be something she would have to explain for herself.

Suddenly, the door to Gendo's office opened and Fuyutsuki and Misato came in, both with shocked and worried expressions on their faces.

"I received a call from the security personnel saying that a boy claiming to be the Third Child had returned," Fuyutsuki explained.

"That's true," Gendo responded.

"That can't be right," Misato expressed. "The entire city was searched, and we couldn't find him."

All they could do was wait now, as the Third Child was coming to them.

The door opened…and, to their shock, the very boy they had been looking for stepped in. Literally, he stepped in, on his own feet. And the way he looked on his face, it was like he got actual help from someone that cared.

"My God," Misato gasped.

"Impossible," Ritsuko added in, being clinical over impressed or frightened. "Your spine was severed below the waist. You shouldn't be able to walk."

Shinji looked at them, and then gazed at his father.

"You have returned," Gendo said. "You look better."

"You make me wanna choke on those words," Shinji expressed. "Don't even pretend you're happy to see me…or better yet, don't pretend that I even exist because of you and your shortcomings."

_Whoa! _Fuyutsuki thought, wondering who this guy was and what he did with the boy that used to be in a wheelchair.

"Uh, are you alright, Shinji?" Misato asked him.

"I am fine," he answered her. "I've had an extensive revelation during my… Oh, what is it people say when someone's not there? Absence? And it was quite a revelation, taking a third near-death experience to show me certain errors that are present because of past choices that didn't have to be made…but were made for unjustifiable reasons."

"What are you talking about?" Ritsuko asked him.

"What am I talking about, indeed," Shinji chuckled a bit. "I'm talking about NERV, that Angel you forced me to face when I was crippled, both physically and mentally, not just emotionally, that bull people were fed about the Second Impact and so on. Three times, I came close to dying…and this walking disgrace (he points at Gendo as he walks past the other three) doesn't show any measure of concern because his mind was already made up on my being expendable, just another piece of his megalomania-based design to give himself absolute reign over all mankind, to decide everyone's fate, just so he can be with his equally-pitiful woman."

"Now, you wait just a minute," Gendo spoke up, but Shinji wasn't done just yet.

"Or what? Or what? What will you do, Father? Huh?" Shinji questioned him. "What, will you send me to my room? Send me back to those heartless relatives that poisoned me with their drugs and sterilized me so that I couldn't have kids of my own, even if I wanted to one day if I ever met the right girl? Spare me your threats of unpracticed fatherhood. They, just as I'm sure of myself, mean less than squat to someone like you. I'm speaking a truth that's been hidden by people like you. A truth that is far bigger than myself, you, what this agency has been misled to believe, and you can't stop the truth from being heard by those that have the will to speak of it."

"You know not what you say," Gendo told him.

"Oh, I think I do," Shinji countered. "Instrumentality? Your so-called path to God that you aim to achieve? A forced evolution, so to say, that would condemn everyone in the here and now to a hopeless future deprived of any freedom that currently exists. I've seen it, and it doesn't pan out for anyone."

"You're delusional, probably from being over-medicated for the last three years," Gendo suggested.

"I'm delusional? Then why are you so obsessed with getting back with your wife that you would have affairs with the fake blond over there (points to Ritsuko) and her mother, which casts serious doubts on your so-called commitment?"

"What?!" Misato gasped, looking at Ritsuko.

"That is so not true," Ritsuko defended.

"You can deny it all you want, lady, but there's no escaping what you did. And with a guy that was with your mother, too. That's not just wrong, it's sick. Just like what you're keeping locked up in your basement is inhuman. I think you called her…Lilith?"

"That's enough!" Gendo raised his voice and stood up from behind his desk.

PUNCH! Shinji intercepted him and punched him hard in the face, sending him falling against the wall behind him.

"It's never enough," he told his father, "because it's too much."

Misato, Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki attempted to get near Shinji, but he turned to face them.

"Anyone else wanna feel my fist in their face?" He asked them, and they backed away. "I didn't think so! Don't shoot the messenger."

"Oh…" They heard Gendo behind the desk, woozy from being hit in the nose with such force.

"Oh, and I should've mentioned this before I stepped into the room, but this conversation was being broadcast throughout the entire building, so everyone heard what was being said…and they're still listening to us right now. There's no keeping quiet about any of this, just as there's no denying the truth that needs to be heard. It's hardly about child abuse and neglect as it is about closure and justice. No CDC or Pentagon or Japanese Ministry that would bury these dark secrets, just the truth and salvation of all mankind. So as the seasons return to Japan, I can only hope that things will go back to a true normality…because I won't be staying in Tokyo-3. And if there's an off-chance that anybody didn't get me loud and clear, I'll say only this. I'm the only child of Gendo and Yui Ikari, a pair of disgraces that neglected their responsibilities as parents in favor of their love of science, and I won't deny that I hate them for doing so. They're cowards, just like anyone else that puts their professions before their families. Gendo's only got one chance, one shot, to make amends for all that he's done, and after that, all bets are off…because I'll have decided that he just expired. And I'll be back to collect what's left of him. On the off-chance that Gendo's even a real man, here's where he can find me: Look for an abandoned shrine north of the city. That's where I'll be for the time being. That's all."

Shinji then walked away from them and left out the room, leaving them to process all that he said…and revealed to the entire base.

"What the Hell was that?" Misato asked.

"An angry person, perhaps?" Fuyutsuki suggested, unsure if the personnel in the base even heard everything that was being said…and if Shinji was really letting them all know the truth that had been hidden from the world.

-x-

The shrine was small, but it was enough for Shinji right now, as he sat by a small fire to warm up away from the snow.

"The truth will set one free," he uttered, "but the truth will bring more than freedom to a large number of people that hear of it."

Beside him was the white wolf he saw earlier, feasting on a fish it had caught from a river that hadn't frozen over. And in front of him on the other side of the fire was a new face: A woman in red robes that held a branch-like staff, and she was roasting a large piece of meat that had also been a fish.

"In a world of modern ethics," she uttered, "people have forgotten their past association to the days of magic that could bring benevolence to all, not just wealth and glory."

"But I'm not doing this for wealth or glory," Shinji told her. "As much as I hate that man, I want him to try and change, which is why I gave him an opportunity to do so. I will not be anything like him."

"I admire your passion for change and redemption. I hope that one day, you will be accepted by those that shunned and disgraced you."

Shinji gave her a silent nod that he agreed with her, but whether or not people would change for him to be accepted was something that only time would tell. And all he could do was wait…and cling to the hope that had once been taken from him…and had been given back.

To be continued…

A/N: How about that? Credit to any that can name the monsters that were seen in this chapter. Just go to the _Yu-Gi-Oh! _Wiki and track the cards down. Review, please. Peace.


	6. Revelations

Creation began on 04-23-15

Creation ended on 09-27-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An Ancient Guardian: Revelations

A/N: Credit to _Akabara Strauss _for identifying Silver Fang and Fire Princess, and credit to _duskrider_ for identifying Silver Fang. And I completely forgot to use the Ultron reference from the new film in the previous chapter.

Some people believed that water washes away all sins, but nobody at NERV believed that any amount of water could ever wash away the sins they had heard of or seen in the base's lower levels after being informed by the Third Child. And the worst of it all was how many of the personnel viewed Gendo and Ritsuko whenever they were seen in the halls, Central Dogma or the cafeteria.

Ritsuko seemed to be getting the brunt of it all from the personnel. Bad enough she was exposed by Shinji for having an affair with his father, but worse was that he, somehow, knew about the affair between his father and her mother, something that he simply shouldn't have known of at all. And these cold truths were reflected on the looks she got from those around her, as it brought into question just how much she truly deserved her position at NERV, a position that was similar to the one that her mother had in the GEHIRN organization…and just as similar to the position that Gendo's wife had prior to her…departure.

Maya Ibuki was one of those personnel members that seemed the most hurt by these revelations, being Ritsuko's protege, and taking this in like a betrayal; Ritsuko didn't want to think about it, but she was certain that the young woman had lost her faith in her.

And as for Misato… What could Ritsuko say or think about her friend? With the truth exposed, the purple-haired woman's relationship with the faux-blond woman became strained, especially when Misato told her that she could've gotten to where she was in the organization without having to do what she did with the boss.

And as she threw herself into her work to escape the looks and gossip she received from the others, Gendo, who was recovering from having his lights knocked out by his son, was trying to reassert his dominance over the agency. But while several dozens of the personnel had discovered the chamber containing Lilith, he was trying to reassure them that it was just the results of NERV's predecessor organization's earliest experiments with the salvaged remains of the First Angel that were used in creating the Evas. And then, there was his lack of a relationship with Shinji, who he was informed had offered him just one chance, one opportunity, to make amends with all that he has done. In honesty, he didn't believe anything the boy said, but wouldn't deny that he had been intimidated by him.

"_On the off-chance that Gendo's even a real man, here's where he can find me: Look for an abandoned shrine north of the city."_ He reviewed the recorded message his son left him prior to leaving the base.

He decided to send several agents of Section Two to search the northern mountains outside the city; he didn't have the time to deal with his son. As far as he had decided, the boy needed to be reminded just who was in charge, who pulled the strings.

-x-

As the snow let up, Shinji stepped out of the shrine he made his temporary residence, seeing the trees and grass covered in layers of snow. His manacles glistening in the distance to any that saw them, and summoning a new creature, courtesy of the spirit of Exodia, in order to teach Shinji more about the creatures he had seen and had been nursed back to being able to walk again.

"I've been anticipating our encounter, young lord," uttered the voice of the newest creature Shinji saw emerging from the snowy distance.

When it came close enough to be identified, Shinji reacted with his eyes widening in surprise. Most of the creatures he had seen so far were humanoids, elemental spirits or animals, but this new one was the first time he saw a monster that embraced the beauty and rejuvenation of nature itself…in the guise of a large tree with what looked like a face carved into its bark.

"I'm not really a lord, so there's no reason to call me one," Shinji expressed towards the talking tree.

"Many old habits are known to die hard," the creature explained its reason for addressing the boy the way it did. "I am the Ancient Tree of Enlightenment, a keeper of wisdom and giver of knowledge."

"Shinji Ikari. I'm the guy that has been saved twice by Exodia, the Forbidden One."

"Ah, Exodia. He is, out of all ancient creatures from a time when the pyramids of Egypt were still settling in after many years of being built by generations past, the strongest of the spirits that can walk the Earth. There were several others, while nowhere near as strong as he, that were and are still powerful in their own right. Beneath him were the Divine Beasts: Obelisk, the Tormentor, Osiris, the Sky Dragon and the Winged Dragon of Ra. Each had the power to crush armies, but together were a force that could match, but never exceed, Exodia himself."

Shinji looked at his manacles and wondered just how old any number of these creatures were, as Exodia had to be over five-thousand years old, and there were bound to be creatures that had to be older than he was.

"You had strings upon you at one point," the tree-monster had spoken.

"Huh?" Shinji responded.

"You had strings upon you for a long time, until you met Exodia, also a former servant to whoever he was bound to by his chains…until they were broken."

"I'm not entirely sure I understand."

"Puppetry, sir. Puppetry. Another way of explaining puppetry in a negative light…is enslavement, manipulation, domination. In many cultures, people were slaves to those that were in control of them…until those strings were severed. The people that were once slaves, once puppets in a way, became aware of their independence, and they stood on their own. Freedom is their ultimate blessing, and independence is their ultimate right. Remove the strings, the puppet will move on its own. Break the chains, the slaves will know freedom."

Shinji nodded in acceptance and expressed, "I hated not being able to speak my mind or stand up for myself. Every time I tried to, I was reprimanded, and this was all before my accident. But now, after taking that herbal remedy the elves gave me, and having my legs healed by the Water Element, I feel much better to be able express myself and say whatever I want to say. I'm no longer an empty shell or a puppet without a thought in his mind."

"Are you ready for your first lesson?"

"I am."

-x-

"…And just how disturbed is the Third Child?" SEELE 01 asked Gendo in the next meeting between the head of NERV and the SEELE council.

"He appears to be very disturbed," Gendo explained, trying to rationalize everything that his son had revealed, and explained that he had gone missing for a while and returned with his ability to walk restored to him. "And due to several near-death experiences, claims to have foreseen the future."

"And what of the future did he claim to see?" SEELE 07 asked.

"That the Instrumentality Project was all for naught."

"And how would he know of this?" SEELE 03 questioned. "Surely, several near-death experiences couldn't have told him much."

"People's lives have been known to flash in front of their eyes as they approach their death," went SEELE 10. "Some have even claimed to see glimpses of the future relating to them as they near death."

"We should have the Third Child reveal to us what he claims to know," SEELE 05 suggested.

"Yes," SEELE 01 agreed. "Ikari, find the Third Child and bring him to be evaluated by the council."

"I have Section Two already searching the mountain terrain north of the city to apprehend the boy and bring him back to NERV." Gendo told them.

-x-

Unfortunately, with the snow covering the ground in excess, traveling up the mountains was not suited for any vehicles unequipped with tires that could move through snow. In addition, the thicket of trees made large vehicles impossible to use. But the Section Two agents were already halfway up the current path on a different mountain for the fourth time, looking for the shrine the Third Child claimed to be living in for the time being. Their orders were simple: Find the boy and reprimand him for his disobedience and false allegations against NERV.

-x-

"Oh, dear, it seems we're about to have unwelcome guests," the Ancient Tree of Enlightenment had told Shinji.

"Is it that man?" He asked the tree-monster.

"I'm afraid not. It is several men, all following orders given to them by the man."

"Well, he had his chance."

"Please, Shinji, don't soil your hands with these mindless drones. Allow the fiends of the darkness to deal with them. They and the monsters associated with all aspects of the water element can deal with these men."

Shinji's manacles glowed for a moment and then stopped.

-x-

"What's that?" One of the agents questioned, pointing towards something that just appeared in front of them. "Is that a…a penguin?!"

It was indeed a penguin, but a penguin with shoulder guards and a sword, like it was a warrior of sorts, and it looked at them like it possessed heightened intelligence.

Just then, another penguin appeared beside it, older in appearance, but wielding a sword, as well.

"What is this?" Another of the agents asked.

"This," went the older-looking penguin, speaking just like they could, "is a snowy…and dark…grasp of fury."

-x-

In his office, Gendo, pondered his next move against SEELE and his son. Because of him, a third of the personnel either got more curious as to what NERV was really up to or left because they couldn't handle working for an organization that had secrets that were less than beneficial to mankind, which meant that they believed the boy over the people in charge.

RING-RING! His phone rang, and he picked it up.

"Yes?" He questioned.

"He found us and sent these…creatures after us," a male voice answered him, sounding out of breath. "The Third Child sent these things after us and they did something to half the men!"

-x-

Examining the sight of the small battle, Shinji picked up a broken pair of glasses and looked down at a tattered coat next to a damaged piece of car frame.

"I tried to be subtle and civil with him," he sighed, "and now he won't get a second chance to make amends for anything."

"Whoa!" He turned and saw a small creature popping out of the snow. "Whoa!"

It was covered in brownish fur, with a pair of greenish arms and legs with yellow talons.

"Uh, hey, there, little fellow," Shinji greeted the creature. "Did you, by any chance, see anyone leave from here?"

It jumped out of the snow and onto a tree branch.

"Whoa!" It chirped, pointing its left claw away from the area and towards the city.

"Thank you," Shinji praised its assistance.

-x-

"…It was big and hideous," an injured man told the NERV medical staff as they were bandaging his mutilated left arm. "It nearly ripped us all to pieces."

"That boy," another man said, "he's gonna come back, and he's gonna unleash Hell upon us because of his father. He's gonna get us."

Ritsuko, who was present, was unsure of what had transpired between these men and the Third Child, and how severe the consequences would've been.

"They're terrified," she heard Misato behind her.

"They claim they saw monsters, but that's debatable," Ritsuko expressed.

"They saw the Angel get obliterated by some sort of creature that was able to shift the planet back onto its original axis, and you think it's debatable? This isn't debatable."

-x-

SWISH! Shinji, armed with a sword that had been bestowed upon him by a humanoid animal that served as a sort of weapons smith from earlier after the Section Two agents were dispatched by the other creatures that kept Shinji from doing so, and informed him that the sword was made from the fossilized remains of a draconic beast that was able to travel between other worlds, so it possessed an ability similar to the creature's own.

He had never learned to wield a sword or any type of blade before in his past, but he was excelling well in the art of swordmanship. Ever since his rehabilitation, he was learning many things that any sane person was better off not knowing, but might as well know to avoid echoing the mistakes of other people that came before him. One such thing he had recalled, which he wished had remained buried in the depths of heartache was what his mother had done. As much as he cared about her in the past, he couldn't bring himself to forgive her for abandoning him to play a ghost in the Eva, just to protect the potential happiness of everyone in the future. If being left alone by his parents meant having to pilot the Eva, lose his ability to walk, his free will, his own future to decide for himself, than he was better off staying away from the abomination and receiving aid from creatures that were beyond the realm of mankind, for they were more welcoming than a one-hundred-meter-tall, man-made organism.

SWISH-SLASH! His swinging was getting faster, and his slashing edge was perfecting itself; he was now able to cut through stone so cleanly.

_There's no way in Hell I will fulfill her agenda,_ he thought, slicing through another pillar of stone. _The only agenda that is to be played out is the revival of the planet. Maybe then, everyone everywhere will have a future that's theirs to decide._

Now, standing in front of him was a stone representation of his old wheelchair, symbolizing everything that had been wrong with his past up to the day he came to Tokyo-3. He dashed over to it and slashed it to bits.

"I will never be crippled again," he told himself.

-x-

"…Well, it looks like you blew the one chance he gave you, Ikari," Fuyutsuki told Gendo in his office, alongside Dr. Akagi. "What happens now?"

"We'll send Section Two after him again," Gendo expressed.

"They're afraid to go after him," Ritsuko informed them. "Whatever they saw out there in the snow traumatized them."

"Then we'll increase the security around the base," Gendo said.

"And if that don't work?" Fuyutsuki asked him.

"Then I'll deal with him myself."

Both the elder man and the faux-blond woman found themselves wondering if he was going to regret that decision in the future.

-x-

As the night blanketed the sky, the snow had quieted down, leaving the stars to shine across the city…and for Shinji himself to wander the streets in order to see how much the people had changed after the return of the snowy season.

Before he left his place at the shrine, he received several adornments from spiritual creatures that bore an Egyptian theme in their appearances, including a headband adorned with the eye of a deity that protected the people of Egypt's lower planes. Around his neck was a golden ornament in the shape of an ankh to symbolize life, and on the middle finger of his right hand was a golden ring with an engraved inscription for balance between the body and the soul.

The sight of few people on the streets meant that the majority of the city's population were indoors where they could stay warm.

He considered them fortunate enough to have places to call home and people to go back to. There was no such luxury for him back in his childhood, and he was still breaking in the restoration of his legs, able to run, to stand on his own feet, to retake the freedom that had been taken from his body that awful day of his unforgiving accident. He soon stopped in front of a window reflecting his appearance…and didn't see anyone that was once weak or pathetic because they didn't have any will or ambitions. No, in front of him was a young man that was taking back the future and giving it to those in need of it, relieving it of those that would dare to abuse it for wrongful purposes.

"It's time to play," he uttered, and resumed his walk towards an unmentioned destination.

To be continued…

A/N: Initially, I wanted Shinji to say, "Shinji-Oh!" at the end of this chapter, but I decided against it. What do you think he meant by "it's time to play"?


	7. Justice, not vengeance

Creation began on 09-28-15

Creation ended on 10-20-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An Ancient Guardian: Justice, not vengeance

As Fuyutsuki stood in front of Unit-01, he pondered how Yui would react to the fact that her only son was a completely different person when he returned to the Geo-Front, no longer needing a wheelchair, but against NERV's beliefs.

_None of us can imagine what he'll do if and when he returns,_ he thought, wondering what Shinji might do to any of them after the blow to the head he gave his father the last time he was in the Geo-Front.

As he continued to stand in front of the Eva, Misato was talking with Ritsuko about the continued reduction in NERV's personnel after the revelations Shinji caused…and the identity of the creature in Terminal Dogma as Lilith.

"You think he's gonna do something about it when he comes back?" She asked Ritsuko.

"With the Third Child, it's hard to say," she responded. "I'm still wondering how he was able to recover the use of his legs after so many years of damage to his spine."

-x-

Standing in front of the pyramidal building that represented nothing but agony in various aspects, Shinji pondered on what monsters to unleash upon the people to ensure that justice was obtained. At first, he considered unleashing creatures similar to the ones that had attacked the men his father had sent after him, but he decided against it. It was his disgust towards the Evangelion that enforced his decision, and made him consider an alternative to supernatural and organic creatures. Since NERV represented a huge step into the future, and the future often meant the greatest achievement of science and technology, Shinji would show them the extent of their advancement with science being misused.

"Mother chose to play the ghost in the shell that was a grotesque blend between manipulated flesh and metal," he uttered, "I shall unleash a legion of machines."

-x-

"…Uh, someone?" One of the female technicians still around NERV HQ gasped in Central Dogma. "The Third Child just entered the base!"

Misato rushed over to a nearby console with a monitor and saw this to be true, and saw that Shinji now looked vastly different from the last two times she saw him.

"What is he doing back here?" Hyuga questioned.

"He's back to deal with his father," Shigeru answered. "He said so himself. If Commander Ikari blew his one chance to make amends for his choices, the kid would come back to get what's left of him."

"You think he's here to kill him?"

"He did say that he expired the last time he was here."

CRASH! Something made a loud noise beneath the command bridge, and in the center was a large hole…where a large, mechanical spider and wolf emerged.

On the back of the spider was a pair of missile pads and the wolf had four cables for tails. Their orders among the machine legion were simple enough to follow: If they found Gendo Ikari, and they knew what he looked like, they were to hold him until Shinji came to deal with him, but should they encounter anyone else, the order was to incapacitate them to keep them out of the way of the primary target. And since Shinji was only after Gendo, murdering everyone else wasn't an option.

The spider's missile pads opened up and fired a barrage of missiles into the air.

"Aaah!" People screamed when the missile exploded and released a smokescreen of gas.

"Aw! Man, it's tear gas!" A man gasped, falling to the floor.

Misato was able to get away before she breathed in the gas along with everyone else that decided to run out the chamber.

In the halls were several other machines, many of which were unlike anything the personnel had ever seen in their lives. Some looked like massive, cybernetic versions of the guillotine with arms and were capable of levitation, while others appeared to be based around the human body, only made bigger or worse than their organic inspiration.

The purple-haired woman thought she had found a guy that had been fortunate enough to get away from Central Dogma or wherever else these machines were popping up, but found herself to be deceived by mere appearances from a distance. The "guy" she saw looked human to a degree, but was equipped with heavy machinery and a sub-machine gun.

"Halt!" He uttered, his very voice sounding mechanical. "Cease and desist! Only the primary target, Gendo Ikari, is to be dealt with! All others are to be restrained and kept at bay! Surrender immediately, and no harm shall come to you!"

Misato couldn't believe her eyes and ears. These machines were ordered to keep everyone except for Gendo alive, probably ordered by Shinji, however he was able to gather such an army in such a short amount of time. She attempted to shoot the cybernetic soldier, but his reflexes were quicker than hers, and he shot her HK USP out of her hands and fired additional rounds that reduced it to molten metal as it fell to the ground in front of her.

"I repeat, only Gendo Ikari is to be dealt with," the machine man repeated.

-x-

"What are these things?" Fuyutsuki asked as he looked at several monitors in the Eva cages, revealing the personnel present were either captured or incapacitated by strange, mechanical creatures unlike anything he'd ever seen before.

They were appearing allover the facility, smashing up through the floors and ceilings. The Sub-Commander saw on one of the monitors one such machine that resembled a giant ball with limbs and watched it roll over at least a dozen of the personnel in the hall, either killing them or incapacitating them. On another, there was a machine that looked like someone's attempt at creating a dragon, but only managed to create a triple cannon variety of the sort, with the cannons replacing the head and two arms, firing energy blasts that either caused explosions when they hit the walls, floor or ceiling, or knocked out a running person when they got hit somewhere on their body, falling to the floor. And on another monitor, he saw Shinji, not as who he used to be, accompanied by another type of machine that looked like a mechanical mockery of a medieval knight. In front of them were some members of Section Two, raising their guns at them, but then Shinji just threw some sort of spinning top in between them, and it lit up and unleashed some sort of hologram…which then started beating the persistence out of the men.

Shinji looked up at the camera and uttered, "This is justice, not vengeance."

"Can we flood the halls with bakelite?" Gendo, who was also in the cages, asked the personnel there.

"We're trying, but these machines have cut most of the system's wires," a woman responded. "Got it!"

-x-

In the hall, Shinji, with a Robotic Knight, heard and saw a loud, rushing wave of red liquid that reminded the boy of blood.

"Gah!" He gasped, but took out his sword and quickly cut open a small rip in the space in front of them, pulling himself and the Robotic Knight into it and sealing it before the red wave hit them.

-x-

"Impossible," Gendo uttered, seeing what his son did on the monitor, just before the camera's vision was obscured by the bakelite.

"And yet, he did the impossible," Fuyutsuki added.

-x-

The rip in space opened up and released Shinji in the last place he expected to find his father: Terminal Dogma, where Lilith remained crucified to the massive, red cross. As a memory derived from his near-death experiences came to him, he found himself shuddering from what had happened when Lilith was exploited and made to absorb all the souls still on Earth. It took him a while to calm himself, but the awful memories of himself being absorbed into the colossal being didn't fade from his conscious mind.

"I can't allow you to remain here where you can still hurt people by being exploited," he told the silent giant. "As long as you exist, you're a danger to us all."

He raised his sword and slit the space in between them, watching as Lilith was sucked into the rip. It took up to three minutes, but Lilith was completely absorbed into the rip and no remnant of her was left on the cross when the rip closed up.

"And now…all that remains is to dispose of her artificial tomb to ensure that nobody can achieve the same outcome," Shinji sighed, opening another rip in space with his sword and going through it with the Robotic Knight.

-x-

Somehow, he wasn't sure how, Gendo sensed that Shinji had done something he didn't expect him to. It was something so severe that it would crippled his plans for Instrumentality, if that plan could still be carried out, despite what that creature that appeared and defeated the Third Angel did as a consequence of its victory.

"They're taking over the entire facility," a woman said, watching the monitors and seeing the machines either incapacitating or gathering every person within reach, and taking them into rooms with ample space to keep them there.

"It looks like the only place they haven't appeared yet are the cages," added a man, seeing through a monitor that several machines in Central Dogma had collected the personnel staff in the command center, and how at least three machines that looked like large, red spheres with single eyes and metal claws latch onto the MAGI before exploding, taking out much of the chamber and the cameras there. "They've just destroyed the MAGI."

Fuyutsuki and Gendo looked at the man and felt they had reached a crossroads just then.

"They're not going to stop until you've been dealt with, Ikari," Fuyutsuki then told Gendo.

Gendo then sighed and took out his gun, checking its mag and then stepping out of the room.

"Handle things here, Fuyutsuki," he told the Sub-Commander. "I will resolve the Third Child's erratic behavior myself."

As he left, Fuyutsuki had to wonder if Gendo was even capable of committing the impossibly-unforgivable act he expected him to be capable. He wondered if Gendo was perfectly willing to murder to his own son.

-x-

Shinji appeared in the command center of Central Dogma, now standing before the destroyed MAGI supercomputers that were more of a pain than a valued asset to NERV in his eyes, after recalling from a memory how any power outage that could affect this entire facility would have the higher-ups put its continued usage over any life-support functions that the people needed to survive down here. He sighed as he picked up a charred piece of the supercomputer's external frame and tossed it over the bridge, almost next to the hole a Launcher Spider and Giga-Tech Wolf came out of. So far, his legion of machines had taken care of most of the personnel within the installation without any loss of life, excluding what would be his father's, and the MAGI and Lilith were disposed of, leaving just two other obstacles in the way of achieving true justice.

"Scanning for priority target," he heard the Robotic Knight behind him say. "Currently scanning. Subject, Gendo Ikari, at present, in motion within the Geo-Front, within NERV HQ."

"There's a possibility that he'll be heading towards that place where we met for the time in years since my…since that awful moment frozen in time."

"Scanning. Scanning. Subject, Gendo Ikari, at present, in motion towards the Eva cages."

Shinji sliced open another rip in space and they jumped in it, heading towards the Eva cages. When the spatial rip opened on the other side of the bridge between the previous location to the next or desired location, Shinji landed onto the bridge that stood in front of Unit-01. He looked up at the horned, purple behemoth and groaned in annoyance over its detestable sense of favoritism by his father and anyone else that valued it more than people's lives.

"Scanning. Scanning. Warning. Spiritual energies detected within foreign, unregistered flesh mass." Robotic Knight informed Shinji. "Spiritual energies detected within unregistered flesh mass located approximately three feet from you."

Shinji then looked at the Eva again, realizing that his mother was obviously aware that he was present.

"You're either going to sit in there and do nothing but watch as the world passes you by, or you're going to come out here and explain your actions, Mother! Because that bastard's not the only person that has caused me grief with neglect and exploitation! You made me watch your experiment! You're on the hook, too! There's nothing good about anything that you've done if it means that countless people have to be the ones that pay the ultimate price for them. Bits of what happened to the planet because of Second Impact are coming undone due to the power of one that saved me from death twice since I got here. I've actually seen snow, something you once promised to show me. If I hadn't been so clueless back when I was still a toddler, I'd probably have a clearer understanding of what you meant by the seasons you helped to halt around the country for too many years."

The immobile behemoth gave no indication that the woman that resided inside was listening.

"You claim that you would be there…but that was just a lie in a series of lies and half-truths. Here's a truth for you to listen to, Mother. What you and your husband have done, what you still want to do, it turns my stomach in! Irony in all that has happened. Light has become darkness, darkness has become light. Pure has become impure, impure has become pure. Right has become wrong…and wrong has become right. In a way, you unleashed a darkness that you thought would get you closer to your goal, but it unleashed a light that would drive it back to its abyss, ruining your messed-up plans."

Still, Unit-01 gave no indication that his mother was listening.

Shinji sighed and reached into his coat's left pocket, pulling out an object that he then attached to the hilt of his sword.

"We can either do this the easy way," he threatened his mother, "or we can do this the hard way. It's all up to you, Mother."

And still, Unit-01 didn't do anything besides stand where it stood in its cage.

_Why waste time on a behemoth that can't even talk back? _He thought, having attached a talisman that represented an ability to forcibly release seals that entombed the souls of those still alive, but were spiritually displaced from their original bodies, either willingly or unwillingly. "Have it your way, then, Mother. You brought this on yourself."

He raised his sword up, preparing to slash at the space between himself and the Eva.

BANG! A gunshot was heard, and Shinji turned to his right on the bridge, seeing his father on the far end, holding a smoking gun in his right hand.

He lowered his sword and faced his father.

"The sword and the gun," he uttered, "how very different we have become. I'm old school and you're cruel school."

"Enough, Third Child," Gendo ordered him. "You have gone too far in your tantrum."

"First of all, I have a name, and it's Shinji. Second, you don't know what a tantrum is, having never seen a fit being thrown that was nothing but a fit. And thirdly, this is justice, not just for me, but for everyone that suffered because of Second Impact and the bane of existence that is the Eva."

"You're going to condemn us all to the nothingness of Third Impact if you continue to run wild. You need to be controlled."

"Controlled? Like those people you left me with that treated me worse than a dog when I lost the use of my legs? I'm a person, not some mindless automaton for you to exploit. But maybe that's all anyone with a conscious is to you, reducing your ability to form meaningful attachments to people. You don't know a thing about relationships, other than to dispose of them if they don't suit you. Is that why you entered into affairs with both Akagi women? Because you knew you could exploit them to suit your sick needs?"

"Don't you dare talk to me like that!" Gendo shouted at him.

"Or what? You're going to shoot me? Go ahead and shoot me! That would just prove that you don't know anything about relationships, and maybe knowing a thing or two about filicide. I'm not here to commit parricide, but you and your wife are on my list of people that need to be dealt with, and you will be dealt with."

"Not if you're dealt with first."

Shinji glared at him a hateful passion as Gendo aimed the gun at his head.

"Grr," something behind Gendo growled viciously, which surprised Shinji.

GASP! Gendo reacted with fright, as something large and muscular grabbed his gun-toting arm and turned him around, forcing him to face the same creature that had destroyed the Third Angel, towering over him.

"You shall not harm Shinji Ikari," it, no, he, uttered in a menacing voice, tightening his grip on Gendo's arm until he was forced to drop the gun.

"Aaaaurgh!" Gendo groaned, now being lifted off his feet…and hurled backwards into the pool in front of Unit-01. "Aaaaugh! Help!"

As Exodia vanished, the threat on Shinji's life negated, Shinji found a life preserver and threw it over to his father, who then had to dog paddle just to reach it.

"I didn't expect him to show up," Shinji expressed, being honest; he really didn't expect Exodia to show up and save him from his father. "I guess this is what people mean when they tell you to expect the unexpected, huh? Things happen that you don't expect will…just like what you don't expect me to do when I swing my sword right now."

He raised his sword again and swung it in front of Unit-01. The schism in space connected this dimension with the dimension within the Eva. He could see a person being dragged from wherever they resided within the Eva into this dimension. As they got closer, Shinji could see the outline of a woman with pageboy-styled hair, a diver's suit with small wings on the back, and appeared to be resisting the force that was bringing her through the vortex.

"…No… Shinji, stop this!" Yui Ikari, the same as the day she went into the Eva, grunted as she was being pulled through.

"This is the power of the Soul Release," he uttered to her.

"It's necessary for me to be inside the Eva!"

"You brought this outcome upon yourself, Mother."

As she emerged from the other side of the schism, she was dropped onto the bridge rather harshly.

"Aah," she groaned, just as the schism sealed up and disappeared from existence. "Oh, my God."

"No," Shinji expressed, lowering his sword down. "Not God. Nowhere near God. God doesn't commit the acts of irredeemable atrocity that you have committed. You say the Eva is a copy of God, but that's bull from the fruit of a poisonous tree. Eva is just a harbinger of despair, an inescapable source of darkness that must be removed from the world. God is believed to be merciful, a teacher who shows us not to be boastful of any achievements. I thanked him for those that gave me back my legs, just as I thank him for giving me the means to gain back my independence and free will. All of it, including my right to refuse you my questionable role in your individual agendas."

Yui slowly got up and made an attempt to approach Shinji, but he raised his sword up against her, making no verbal sign that he would make her regret that choice.

"Shinji," she tried to explain her reasons to him, certain that the serious gap in the years between his time as a toddler and his current time as a young teen have hampered his memories. "I can explain if you let me."

"There's nothing left to explain," he told her, and pointed towards the wet form of Gendo, who made his way to the bridge. "I'm not interested in helping either of you or anyone that wants to fight the creatures you call the Angels, God's own messengers, and I will make sure that you won't lay a finger on them, either. To face and kill God's messengers is to renounce God and question his divinity and infallibility as the absolute authority. Those that wanted for Second Impact to happen are those that must be brought to justice, one way or another. And you, you knew it was going to happen, and instead of trying to keep it from happening, you helped the people behind it. Heh, and you never really matured any further since before you went into the Eva that godforsaken day. If you had, then you'd know that life has been nothing but Hell for me since he (he gestured his head towards Gendo as he climbed out of the colored water) abandoned me. But I'm not here to make any of this about me. That would be vengeance, not justice, which is what this is about. Justice for those that suffered because of NERV, the Eva, people that want to end the world for some bullshit project that they believe will save them. Human Instrumentality, forcing people to evolve and merge into a single, consummate being? It's no different from global genocide, and I'll let the world know of this all…and everyone directly involved, which includes you two."

"You can't do this!" Gendo told him. "People will need the Eva to deal with the Angels when they come back!"

As he made a move for the fallen gun, Gendo saw it turn to molten pulp; the Robotic Knight behind Shinji had taken action and fired a laser at the weapon.

"Thank you," Shinji praised the machine creature. "You say the Angels will keep coming, huh? Why do you say that? Maybe because of Lilith, whom is no longer here because I disposed of her? Maybe because of Adam, who you would've had devoured to give yourself his AT-Field? Dispose of Adam, and they'll stop. Dispose of the Evas, and Instrumentality can't be achieved, and people can move on with their lives."

"We can't do that, Shinji," Yui uttered.

"Can't…or won't? Either way, it doesn't matter, for it has become something of an ambition for me to preserve the life that will return to this blue marble from your flawed science. What good is your science…when it can't really save anyone?"

"We didn't have any other choice," Yui expressed. "We were relying upon you to see us to a brighter future for all of mankind."

"That's too much expectation to force on one person…and it's a really lame excuse, Mother. It just enforces my own decision to…sever personal ties."

"What?" Gendo asked him.

"I can't stand being used by people that claim to care about me, and I can't stand being left alone by people that claim to care about me. So I'm washing my hands of the Ikari name. I renounce you two as my parents, and I will likely never see you after this night." He revealed.

"Shinji, you can't leave us," Yui pleaded to him. "Please, we can talk about this."

"At a time before any of this, I would've wanted to talk about any hopes of reconciliation, but it's moot to discuss this any further. I'm going to dispose of your precious Unit-01 now."

He swung his sword horizontally, creating another schism in space, and unleashed a dozen or so of the same machines that had destroyed the MAGI, floating in the air before latching onto the purple behemoth's head and plunging into the water, likely to latch onto the other parts of the behemoth.

"You had best leave now," he told them. "These Blast Spheres were timed to self-destruct five minutes after latching onto the Eva. That should give you enough time to reach the minimum safe distance."

After opening another schism behind himself, Shinji and the Robotic Knight went through it.

"Shinji!" Gendo called out to him, but the schism began to seal up. "Shinji! SHINJI!"

-x-

He never heard the large explosions that signaled the end of Unit-01, but he felt the vibrations when he stepping into the destroyed room of where another memory provided by his last near-death experience revealed to him as the Dummy Plug Plant, where all the spare bodies for the Rei Ayanami girl once resided. The entire room had been destroyed, scattering bits and pieces of the multitude of cloned bodies everywhere. As he looked around, he found pieces of Blast Spheres littered around with the remnants of the cloned bodies. Now, the girl was no longer replaceable, no longer expendable, truly unique, one of a kind.

"I did it," he uttered to himself. "Lilith's gone. Unit-01's gone, the MAGI's gone, and these forgeries are gone. NERV is in shambles now. Nobody will suffer because of them, anymore."

He opened another schism in space and went through it, intending to reappear atop a mountain outside of the city.

-x-

In less than five hours, after the machine army had disappeared from the base after letting free some of the personnel members so that they could release the remaining captives, the Geo-Front was emptied of people. While the damages caused were either minor to less than extensive in some areas, the damages to the MAGI, the cage of Unit-01 and Unit-01 itself, as well as the Dummy Plug Plant were over the Hayflick Limit; it would've taken months to repair the damages to all four. And the loss of Lilith was also a major crap in NERV's operational requirements against the Angels. The only real bright side to all of this was the complete lack of civilian casualties when this all started; even with the injured members, nobody was killed.

"We…we need to… We need to put out a manhunt for the Third Child," Ritsuko declared. "We have to hunt him down and incarcerate him."

"No way, lady," went a man to her. "I'm not messing with that kid, crippled or not. He might as well have put us out of a job."

"He had machines that were unlike anything we've seen before," added a woman. "Some of them looked like people wearing cybernetics with guns. They destroyed the MAGI."

"I got rolled on by a robot…after another that looked like a dragon with cannons shot me in the back and legs," another woman revealed. "I wished they had just killed me."

Misato, having surrendered willingly after that cyborg destroyed her gun earlier, suspected that there was now more to Shinji than what had happened to him before he returned to the city after regaining the use of his legs. To discover that he had renounced his ties to his family, that he had set his mother free from the Evangelion (against her will, by the way), and that he had the entire conversation between his parents and himself broadcast throughout the entire base for all that were conscious to hear. Yes, he took the entire facility out, all to get back at his parents for their absence, but he had also claimed that it was justice, not vengeance. If it had been vengeance, he would've simply killed them.

"So what now?" She heard Maya ask.

"What now?" Shigeru responded. "I'm going home."

"Yeah, me, too," added Hyuga.

"Same here," Misato agreed with them, as she needed to check up on Pen-Pen.

-x-

In the abandoned shrine, laying beside a small fire, Shinji had set his sword aside and reflected upon all that he did over five hours ago. In that time, he had torn down NERV by removing the resources that they had present that could've been used to harm the people. He had removed Lilith, sending her to another dimension that was as barren as a desert or frozen tundra where she couldn't be exploited by human hands, had the MAGI supercomputer system at their disposal ruined beyond reconstruction, set his mother free from her Evangelion tomb to punish her, and then severed his ties with the Ikari family. Did he feel shame for any of it? He did feel some shame, but not enough to feel for his parents and their future after all was said and done.

By crippling their agency, he had helped to preserve mankind's future as the planet truly began to heal. He owed these monsters, these spirits, machines, dragons, dinosaurs, warriors and beasts a tremendous debt of gratitude for their services. He owed Exodia for saving his life three times when he had been placed in danger. For the first time in a long time, he felt like he could look into the sunlight with hope restored to him.

Looking past the fire, he saw the being that had protected him, standing in front of him, looking down with soul-piercing eyes. He didn't fear his presence at all, giving a small smile.

"Thank you, Exodia," he praised him, and the being disappeared from sight.

And for the first time since his legs were restored to him, Shinji slept without a heavy doubt handing over his mind.

To be continued…

A/N: And here's the new chapter. What do you think of it? I don't know how to progress right now, but I hope this chapter will satisfy some of you out there that read it. Peace.


	8. Return to Begin

Creation began on 10-20-15

Creation ended on 10-20-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An Ancient Guardian: Return to Begin

Stepping into the antique shop where it all began, in a sense, for him, Shinji walked up to the counter where the shopkeeper sat behind it, reading an old novel.

"Hello again," he greeted the elder, who looked up at him.

"My, my," the elder responded. "Look at you. Didn't you used to be in a wheelchair?"

"Eh-heh. Yeah. I went through a change that helped me a lot. I really must thank you for giving these bands. I feel as though I wasn't saved until I got them."

The elder smiled and expressed, "The Bands of Exodia are a rare and powerful relic…but only those in need of them. You were a soul in need of them."

"And Exodia, as well as many others under him, saved my life and gave me a new path to take."

"Exodia, the Forbidden One, also known as the Ancient Guardian. A protector for those needing to be protected from people or forces beyond themselves."

Shinji then decided to remove the bands and hand them over to the shopkeeper.

"Oh, no, young man," he told him. "They're yours…until you pass them on to someone else in need of protection from people or forces beyond themselves."

Shinji accepted this and placed them back onto his wrists.

"So, what will you do now?"

"I've pretty much become a ronin," Shinji revealed to him. "I've severed my ties with my family, and I pretty much exposed them of their secrets. I don't even have a place to call home, and that's not entirely a bad thing for one that has no family to turn to. So I'll be here and there. There's still one last thing to take care of, and then everything will likely be alright for years to come. I just want for there to be a renewal of life on this planet now…and to live as opposed to exist."

"Ah, yes, there is a fine line between living and existing. To exist is to just be part of the world you reside in, and to live is to make yourself seen, heard and known. One can go crazy trying to find their place in life, but it looks like you'll be able to find yours in due time…on this path you're on. Good luck on your journey."

"Thank you."

And with that, Shinji stepped back out into the winter-dominated streets of the small town where his life almost ended for him when he lost his legs…and where its first piece of pavement set up the path to his freedom.

To be continued…

A/N: Yeah, I know it's a shorty, but it continues to show that Shinji has severed his ties with the Ikari after everything that happened to him. We can expect something new to occur in the future, though.


	9. Bitterness is Relativity

Creation began on 10-21-15

Creation ended on 10-21-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An Ancient Guardian: Bitterness is Relativity

A/N: How the people affected by Shinji's crippling of NERV are handling things.

A month had past since the only son of Yui and Gendo Ikari had crippled the majority of NERV, and several members of the personnel had been effected emotionally. If it wasn't the fact that they were shown the full measure of the base's security flaws against invading armies (nobody had ever anticipated what amounted to a full-scale invasion force of machines), it was the fact that it was one being led by a young man that used to be in a wheelchair and destroyed two of several important equipment in their possession. Not many of the personnel wanted to come back after that night of cold justice that they, in one way or another, paid the price for.

Misato was among them, unable to handle Shinji crippling the agency that was supposed to be fighting the Angels after he had Unit-01 destroyed. She viewed that particular Eva in some ways as a double-edged sword, but he had revealed why. And then, there was the fact that his mother, believed to be deceased for over a decade, was the hand behind it. In many ways, she and Shinji were alike, being that they came from complicated families.

Fuyutsuki hadn't returned to the Geo-Front, either. With the loss of Unit-01, the MAGI and Lilith, there wasn't much of a reason for him to go back there. While there was still that old threat on his life from when he had threatened to expose NERV's predecessor agency and its backers for their role in Second Impact, he didn't care about that, anymore. He was old and suspected that sooner or later, he would be dealt with for his own crime of keeping the truth secret.

Ritsuko was crushed with the destruction of the MAGI. It had been her mother's greatest achievement, and the Third Child had it destroyed like it was meaningless. An invaluable piece of remarkable technology, gone and incapable of being salvaged. Not only that, but her reputation at NERV was in tatters after it was revealed that she, her mother and Gendo were all involved in love affairs by Shinji, who shouldn't have known any of this…but did and exposed it all. There was no way she could deal with the odd looks and whispers and gossip about how she obtained her position there.

If anyone had to guess who got the worst of the outcome that night, it was the Third Child's parents. Nothing was the same for Gendo or Yui. Supposedly, after the revelation of that night and all that had been said, Gendo suddenly became suicidal and had to be committed by his wife, shouting things like, _"You lied to me"_,_ "You taunted me"_ and_"What was this truly about?"_ And Yui herself was broken by her son's rejection of them after everything that happened…and everything that didn't happen. She found out from Fuyutsuki that Shinji had given his father just one chance to atone from his actions, past and up to that harmful night…and Gendo blew it.

With everything that was turned upside-down now, the entire organization was left pondering what was going to happen now. While the other branches of NERV were unharmed, Japan's primary branch had taken the heaviest blow, as they were an Eva short, repairs to their working prototype was stalled, they couldn't predict any Angel arrivals without the MAGI, and the number of people that worked at NERV was cut down to less than two-thousand. If they were to be attacked by an Angel absolutely nothing would stand in the way between them and extinction. The only thing that contradicted this belief was the less-than-meaningful word of the Third Child himself.

To be continued…


	10. Day of Adam

Creation began on 10-22-15

Creation ended on 10-28-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An Ancient Guardian: Day of Adam

_"It's your fault for leaving him when you did, sister," _Yui remembered what her sister had told her during her visit to the detention center she was sent to for her role in the malpractice abuse done to Shinji. _"Your husband dumped him on us when we said we didn't want him. He was nothing but trouble, and simply because he was your son. Honestly, I wasn't sympathetic when he lost the use of his legs. At least during that time, he was less trouble than he was worth. We practically did him a favor by having him sterilized. One less child like him, one less problem. Don't forget that it was your decision to have him. He's as much your problem as he was your husband's."_

As Yui was back in the familiar setting of NERV HQ, she couldn't believe that her family had nearly destroyed Shinji when he was with them, from the malpractice abuse by the doctors and her sister's family to the very manipulation by herself and Gendo, which led him to sever his ties with them. It had been more than two months now, and nobody from the police to SEELE themselves have been able to find him, not that anyone bothered or tried; with the gossip that spread since that night he brought NERV to its knees, whispers about him had been passed around that made something of a person that many didn't want any trouble from. But Yui, out of parental concern, really wanted to find Shinji, to talk to him, try and atone for the hurt he had to suffer when he was left alone.

"_Still…the very idea of __Shinji Ikari being your legacy__…__ Sometimes, I wonder if you and your husband were better off with a worthless statue." _Her sister had told her, which further cemented their disassociation from one another.

Another mystery that had been going on was that the Fourth Angel, which was supposed to arrive in Japan after the Third Angel had been defeated, hadn't made itself known. What most didn't know for the reason behind this was due to the absence of Lilith, which had been used as a lure for the Angels to come. Without her, they wouldn't, and with only Adam left, it was only a matter of time before they wised up and located him. And when that happened, all bets were off on what they would do with the rest of the human race.

_We don't have enough of the material used in the creation of the Ayanami Series to replace Unit-01, _thought Yui, as she found herself trying to work with the salvaged remains of Rei Ayanami's clone bodies. _We're in serious trouble if any Angels show up looking for Adam. Where are you, Shinji? Where did you go?_

-x-

Deep within a forest, one of many salvaged from the extensive flooding that was undone with the increased distance from the moon and the power of Exodia himself that had been unleashed following the Third Angel's destruction, there was a spring. It had a healthy, greenish-blue glow to it, and a large pillar of stone rising from the middle. As everything around the forest returned to life, allowing for even animals that were rendered extinct because of Second Impact, a lone figure sat in the spring, just soaking in its waters. If anyone else had seen the person relaxing mildly in the warm waters of the spring, they would've seen that it was Shinji himself, who had been led to this special place by two of the very creatures associated to the realm of nature and all its wonders.

"Ah… This is rejuvenation," he sighed.

"Such has always been the Spring of Rebirth," said the voice of a young man several feet away from the spring and Shinji. "Its waters restore vitality and heals the body of what had been taken from long ago, including the restoration of lost limbs."

Once he had spent a little under half an hour in the spring, Shinji emerged from it, revealing that he had his pants on, and stood in front of the keeper of the voice, revealing themselves to be an elf-like man with a lavender skin tone and greenish hair adorned by leaves and branches…with arms that were like the trunk of a tree. This was the Green Phantom King, a spirit of the forestlands and all the animals that resided in them.

As Shinji dried off, the forest spirit had suggested to him that he should visit his wife to know of the continued restoration of the planet; all Shinji had recalled learning recently before immersing himself within the rejuvenating waters of the spring was that the massive reduction in the global water allowed for a rainforest to return to life. Shinji told him that he would take the suggestion to heart and see his wife before heading into an urban area to see how much had changed since the night Exodia changed the present.

"My Queen of the Autumn Leaves will be pleased with your presence," the forest spirit expressed to the young man.

Shinji covered his half-dried torso with a green shirt and blue coat and picked up his sword. He could've opened a schism between here and where the Queen of the Autumn Leaves was, but Shinji was still adjusting to his legs' restored mobility; walking was what he considered to be his best luxury that needed to be embraced with each new day. Ever since the Mystical and Dark Elves and Water Element healed his legs, he didn't want to take his restored mobility for granted, as he missed being able to walk and run, both of which he couldn't do confined to a wheelchair. So he walked down the forest path to find the king's queen.

The forest creatures that he had never seen before were quite active with he ending of the summer and the beginning of autumn. Squirrels were climbing up tree branches, hummingbirds were flying around flowers to fill their bellies with nectar and spread pollen to other flowers, and deers and rabbits were scattering around on the ground. It was quite a lively forest, representative of the life that was returning.

In front of Shinji on the path to the ends of the forest was another person that seemed like a regular woman, but as he got closer, the woman was anything but regular. Her dress was a reddish color, as was her hair, which was adorned with a tiara or crown of autumn leaves, and her exposed arms were like those of the Green Phantom King's, like the trunk of a tree. This was the Queen of the Autumn Leaves, the wife of the Green Phantom King. She looked towards him and waved her left hand to greet him.

"I've been expecting you, young lord," she expressed.

"I apologize if I kept you waiting," Shinji apologized to her.

"It's unnecessary. Most people don't understand how much their legs are among their greatest of blessings to have ever been embraced."

"Thank you. I was told that you knew something about the restored happenings of the Earth?"

"I do. Many landmasses that were once above water that have restored are bursting with renewed life. Many of the trees, like the Redwood and oak variety, have returned to their former glory. I am a particular fan of the elder trees because of their affinity for being bearers of elderberries, which I enjoy eating. My husband is a fan of holly and yew trees, as some cultures believe them to be associated with the light and dark. Besides the plants, many animals, from wolves to tigers, have returned from the realm of death. The elephants, the lions, the whales. Oh, my."

"The past becomes the present."

"And the present becomes our future. Let what was be once more, let the darkness of what is be no more."

-x-

"…Rei Ayanami, meet the designated pilot of Unit-02 and the Second Child," went Misato as she introduced the albino girl to the redhead. "Asuka Langley Soryu. Asuka, this is Rei Ayanami, the designated pilot of Unit-00 and the First Child."

Asuka, having arrived in Tokyo-3 the day before today, had found the albino girl not much to look at. In her mind, anyone else that could pilot the Evas was nothing more than competition.

"So, where's the Third Child?" She asked Misato. "I heard he was around."

"He…quit," the purple-haired woman responded.

"He quit? What kind of idiot just goes and quits?"

"The kind that shows us how pathetic we really are and shows contempt towards his parents for their absence in his life, was confined to a wheelchair for three years, and was just learning how to be free again."

"So it's true, then. What Kaji told me on the plane ride from Germany, that the Third Child had been a handicapped boy. Why would NERV recruit a handicapped boy? I thought only physically-capable pilots were a requirement for the Evas."

"He was confined to a wheelchair, but then he went missing after the only motel the city that was wheelchair-accessible was burnt down, and when he came back, he was walking again…and he disgraced NERV with what was discovered to be many secrets that were being kept from the people, including what had been kept in NERV's basement."

"And that's why there's fewer people here right now? Because of that boy that hated his old man? You sure he wasn't crazy?"

"Honestly, Asuka, it was his family that's crazy."

"Crazy parents?"

"Everyone in his family. Everyone. His mother, his father, his aunt and uncle, everyone. Crazy, cruel, unforgivable."

Asuka was starting to wonder just what went on at NERV that she wasn't aware of, and what this Shinji Ikari fellow did that damaged the paramilitary's reputation. From most of what Kaji had told her on their way here, the Third Child had been in an accident over three years ago that left him unable to use his legs, and rendered him more of an outcast, ignored by virtually everyone around him until he was summoned to the city by his father, the former commander, who had to be incarcerated due to a breakdown of sorts between him and his wife, who was revealed to be very much alive after being declared dead for over a decade. The boy had gone missing for a few days, but then comes back, and threatens to take down NERV…and ends up doing much of that with some sort of army and destroying one of the two Evas they had at the time.

"Talk about a complete one-eighty," she expressed to Misato. "So who's in charge of running NERV now?"

"You're looking at her," Misato revealed. "Not exactly what you were expecting, right?"

-x-

People were still reclaiming territory by the time he arrived in where he understood was an urban setting just outside of Washington D.C. Many of the homes and buildings had been extensively damaged because of being submerged in water for over a decade, but Shinji knew that this was okay. He had visited a library in Sapporo, Hokkaido and read up on the concepts of death, destruction and rebirth. While he wasn't a fan of any concepts of death and destruction, having seen enough destruction and not desiring any further death than what had already transpired, and was completely unnecessary, he admired the beliefs of rebirth, whether they were metaphorically, spiritually or literally. The buildings were damaged, but what once stood in their places, new buildings, once the appropriate resources were gathered, could be built in place of them, allowing for a new start.

He himself had also gone through a sort of rebirth, in more than one way. When he was saved from the Third Angel by Exodia (and not his mother, no matter how much she probably wanted to, but at the same time service her own needs), his old life had officially ended and the groundwork for his new life had started being paved for him. After Exodia saved him a second time, brought him to the elves and water spirit that healed his legs and restored his mobility, cleared his mind of the conflicting aspects that were due to the drugs that were never for the pain he was in much of the time, his new life started that day he stood once again on his feet without the need for assistance. And then, after severing his ties with his parents and the Ikari family completely, wanting nothing further to do with any of them so long as the world kept spinning, so long as he kept breathing, that was when his latest life started. His new life, free from them for good, no longer following their twisted paths and creating his own.

_Sometimes, aspirations can be deadly,_ he thought, _but only when they include using the lives of many, countless people as the currency with which to pay for such ambitions._

Crack! He had stepped on something he wished he hadn't stepped on: A human bone that hadn't degenerated much over the last fifteen years, and it broke under his left foot.

_I only have two ambitions,_ he continued with his thoughts._ One is to live my life on my own terms, free from the puppetry of others whose morals are nothing more than decay, and the other is to ensure that what I saw in those memories triggered by my near-death experiences can never happen, no matter what. You can't guarantee hope with an abomination copied from a creature you don't fully understand. You can't grant salvation by smashing people's souls together to fill in the gaps we all have in ourselves. As flawed as we are as individuals, it's also our blessing to remain that way, as flawed and separate pieces of a greater whole that cast us all aside for a reason we were never meant to understand, to never know about. Anyone that thinks it's fate to be unified as one being is delusional and unappreciative of individuality. I stood firmly on my legs for the first time in a long time after losing the use of them…and I felt whole once again. If we were all unified, we'd all know how I felt about that. My thoughts, my feelings, they wouldn't be mine, anymore. Nobody's hopes or dreams would be theirs. They'd be everyone's. And it wouldn't be right. It just wouldn't the way people were meant to live._

Standing beside some rusted fences, Shinji took his first look at what was once the White House, seeing the tattered remains of the United States flag flapping in the air. If this place was the land of the free and the home of the brave, then it would have a chance to embrace such beliefs once again, and how people could embrace all the wonderful freedoms that used to be for granted. It was a new day every day. A new day to live, to laugh, to heal.

Tap. Something touched his right leg, and he looked down to see that it was a blue ball.

"Sorry, mister," he looked up ahead and saw a little boy and some other kids had been playing around the filthy streets that were seeing rebirth. "Can we have our ball back, please?"

He picked the ball up and threw it to the kids.

"Be careful where you play," he informed them. "You only have one life. Make it last."

The boy nodded and ran with the kids to continue playing with their ball.

"You only live once," he uttered to himself, and walked away from the White House. "Life is precious and needs to be protected."

-x-

"…I'm surprised you came back, Ritsuko," went Kaji to the faux-blonde, seeing her stand in front of where the MAGI once resided in Central Dogma. "After everything that happened…and with the loss of your protégée…I, uh…"

She turned to face him, her face looking like absolute Hell because of many cups of coffee she had in the last few weeks.

"We're being assisted by the MAGI supercomputers at the other facilities until we can rebuild our own," she explained, "and as for Ibuki… The Ikari family is literally an omen of misfortune. The Third Child that was supposed to be cooperative ended being our worst mistake…and perhaps our worst enemy when you exclude the Angels."

"So, what he said about you and his father, then… That was just a lie he was sputtering?"

"You can't believe everything you hear. He's delusional. Who knows what runs through his damaged brain?"

"But what about that army of machines he brought with him that night he came back for the last time? They were years, maybe decades or centuries beyond anything currently in existence. Bombs strong enough to damage the MAGI and Unit-01 and leave everything else, more or less, intact, machines that look like mechanical dragons that shoot lasers from three cannons, robotic soldiers and cybernetic humans that could pass for being human. I even heard about one machine that looked like it was organic, but also looked like an alien, and another machine that looked like a giant dragon that was in the Unit-00 cage, as if it was standing guard to keep anyone from using it."

Ritsuko, due to watching the available surveillance videos taken from that night, couldn't deny that those dragon-like machines with the triple cannons were the only ones there. She saw the cage holding Unit-00, despite it being in a state of disrepair, guarded by a large, black, dragon-like machine that looked as though it had once been a living version of a fierce beast, stripped of all of its organics and left as a soulless piece of metal following simple instructions. And even if there had been a chance of them using Unit-00 to deal with the machine army issue, the First Child had been in no condition to pilot the Eva and hope to survive. And there was no guarantee that dragon-like machine wasn't the only machine in the cage after discovering what machines were used to destroy Unit-01.

"If he ever turns up, when he turns up, he'll be made to spill how he got access to such an army of expendable constructs with such powers," she told him. "He humiliated the agency, left us all with our pants down."

"Pants down?" They both heard one of the male technicians express. "That kid pretty much had us ass-raped with a rebar!"

Kaji had to cover his mouth to refrain from laughing at that comment.

-x-

"…If we can't recreate Unit-01 from the remnants of the Dummy System NERV possessed, then we'll have to resort to using the cloned flesh of Adam," went SEELE 06 to the other members during their next meeting. "All we have left is Adam now that Lilith is no more."

"And Ikari is incapable leading NERV now that he's suffered a breakdown, rendering his usage to us a continued waste," added SEELE 10.

"Our scenario has faced tremendous setbacks because of the Third Child and his…unpredictability," said SEELE 02, stressing the immense cause of their goals becoming hindered and made more difficult. "Ikari said that he could control the boy, crippled or not, but the boy showed that he wouldn't allow himself to be controlled by his father…or his mother. He wasn't the cooperative pilot we were told he could be when he was fetched for! A cripple that stands against fate! The fate of destruction is also the joy of rebirth! Real rebirth! Shinji Ikari… He is unreasonable, and therefore cannot be reasoned with!"

All the members unanimously agreed that because of Gendo Ikari's inability to handle the situation regarding his son was the direct cause of the NERV branch in Japan becoming damaged and the loss of both Unit-01 and Lilith. But because of this agreement on who was to blame for these losses, it also meant that the boy, if he ever could, would make sure that any and all means to achieve the Human Instrumentality Project were rendered impossible to achieve, and that meant that he could (and just might) come for Adam, body and soul.

"Should he discover Adam and Tabris and dispose of them as he was able to with Lilith and Unit-01, all of our plans, everything that we worked on for the last fifteen years and before even the end of the Twentieth Century will have been for naught," warned SEELE 04 in the meeting.

"So long as the Adam embryo remains secure, we can rework our goal," SEELE 01 assured them all. "So long as he cannot find Adam, there is nothing he can do to stop us."

"But so long as he exists, he is a threat, regardless of his methods. The Third Child must be disposed of. The Third Child…must be erased." SEELE 12 expressed.

-x-

"So, that's his mother?" Asuka asked Misato, looking in the damaged cage of Unit-01 at Yui Ikari, who was looking at notes on a clipboard. "She's been alive the whole time?"

"It's complicated," Misato explained; ever since that night Shinji came and laid them all low, he had revealed to them that his mother had been inside Unit-01 and said a lot of what had been spoken between the parents and their only child. "But Shinji wasn't very happy to see her after so many years. After she came back, he renounced his ties to his family."

"He disowned himself?"

"He resented them for their choices," went Rei, who was with them in the cages as Unit-02 was being installed. "He resented his father for abandoning him…and his mother for leaving him."

As they continued to converse, Yui, still wondering where her son had run off to, tried to figure out a way to recreate Unit-01 with the salvaged remains of the cloned bodies of Rei when there was no way to accelerate the generation of cellular tissue that had been dead for too long. She couldn't be sure how, but her child had made absolutely sure that any more tissue from Lilith, all save the LCL, the primordial blood of the Seed of Life that had been left in Terminal Dogma, had been inaccessible to anyone that could manipulate it. Even she, with all of her skills in genetic engineering, would be unable to perform impossible solutions that dealt with the Evas. They were all stuck at a dead-end, unable to move any forward.

-x-

In an abandoned building that hadn't been explored yet, with some structural instability in its foundation, Shinji, within the city limits of New York itself, had met with the Mystical and Dark Elves, accompanied by a new person he hadn't met before. It was a man, looking well into his mid to late-twenties, with pale hair and bluish skin with strange markings under the eyes that extended to his cheeks, and he was dressed in dark clothing that looked like armor and carrying a long staff that looked as though a blade had been fused into it, making a formidable weapon in its own right. He made Shinji think that the guy had once tried to be magician of sorts, but ended up going down the path of the warrior instead.

"Hello, sir," he greeted him after he greeted the elves, bowing his head to them. "I am Shinji. Who are you?"

"I am the Dark Paladin," the man introduced himself, bowing back. "A long time ago, I was two people with two lifetimes of experience. One a swordsman able to conquer dragons, the other a sorcerer of the darkness that used his powers for benevolent purposes. Until one day, we became one to overcome a dragon we couldn't defeat as two."

"You were…two people?" Shinji questioned, confused about how to face a man like this Dark Paladin, who might've been a minor representation of what he wanted to prevent from happening to other people for all the wrong reasons. "Is…is what you did to become who you are…permanent? Can't you separate?"

"I cannot," he answered. "Sometimes, the strongest of us…cannot undo what had to be done. But don't fret over it. While their bodies and powers have melded together, their souls cannot be merged into one. Spiritual fusion is not prohibited. Merger between bodies may be allowed to various degrees, but to harmonize the minds and souls of those seeking fusion is impossible. I carry without the free will of the great Dark Magician and the remarkable Buster Blader, who will remain as they were inside me."

"Okay," Shinji accepted. "I have used my sword to travel to different places I get to fast enough by walking. While many of the places are still as they were due to being underwater for fifteen years, there is still a potential for rebirth. I stood on the Great Wall of China, atop the Eiffel Tower, even the World Trade Center of New York. Thanks to Exodia, these places and more are seeing the rejuvenation of life."

"It's by your hands that this is happening, too, young lord," the Mystical Elf revealed to him. "It's because of you that life, even the smallest forms of life, returns to lay claim to this world."

"Sadly, however," went the Dark Elf, "lives that are human…can't be brought back as easily as the soul you set free from its willing imprisonment. Released from a spiritual prison upon them by mortal hands of cruelty, they can be…but not brought back to life if there is no body for them to return to…and of their own accord."

"You mean…the souls of those that were taken and locked away, the people that couldn't move on after death…either can't be brought back to life…or won't be brought back to life?"

"I'm afraid not. But such is the way of human mortality. To live once…and to die free…is of an order that can't be manipulated by those of the flesh. Immortality is not the way for any to know unending life."

"We can't all live forever," Shinji agreed with her. "Life, in all its forms, must be lived within the time that it's allowed."

"But your time, while just as finite as anyone else, needs to be preserved until you see no further need to protect it and let it wane," the Dark Paladin expressed.

"My life needs to be preserved? Even though I will not live for long?"

"To protect one's own life and to allow one to live without end…are vastly different from one another. A life without end is without meaning…whereas a life with an end is full of meaning, but needs to be preserved…only until such meaning is known. To remedy this, we have come to give you this."

The Dark Paladin waved his staff and opened a rip in space, but to Shinji, it seemed as though he had gone and ripped through something more than space. And from the rip came an object that Shinji hadn't expected to see. It looked like some sort of shield, but made of gold, silver, ruby and platinum, shaped like a circle, engraved with numbers and a pair of hands with rings on the fingers. There was something about it that attracted Shinji's small sense of awe that was growing with each passing day.

"What is this?" He asked them.

"This…is the Time Shield," the Mystical Elf revealed. "It is forged from all that remains of the Time Wizard, a sorcerer versed in mysteries of the past and future, able to manipulate time. Know that time, in terms of existence, is elastic, flexible and reversible, but has limits. Should it ever become necessary for you, you can use the shield to go back in time to before a situation occurs to prevent it from happening. This way, you can change fate by doing something different from what might've been attempted before."

"Like…like a video game, then?" Shinji questioned.

This confused the elves and the Dark Paladin.

"What is a video game?" He asked.

"Uh… It's an old thing from the previous century that people made for entertainment purposes."

"If it's similar to returning to a certain point to begin again, then yes," the Mystical Elf answered his question.

"Okay."

Shinji then put the shield on his left arm, finding it fitting a bit snugly and its inner, curved section that protected his arm had a series of these small, golden rings.

"Rings of Magnetism," the Dark Elf revealed. "They ensure that, should you be placed in a dangerous situation where your body is in jeopardy, what is used to attack you will only hit the shield. No harm in as much protection as possible."

"Thank you," he told them. "It is appreciated immensely."

"Just be careful," they all said to him. "You only have one life. Don't lose it."

-x-

The trees surrounding Tokyo-3 were covered in brownish leaves to signify the rise of the fall that came after summer. And the reduction in the noise the cicadas made showed that, despite the heavy loss of them because of the short period of winter that affected the archipelago, Japan was returning to normal.

However, the only thing that wasn't returning to normal was NERV, which reeling in the heavy loss in the reduction of their personnel. Even though they had the inclusion of Unit-02, the feeling that the Angels wouldn't return after that night one of them was defeated by an unknown that they had never seen before.

This was something Misato found irritable, but this came with the territory of being the head of the agency tasked with defending the human race against the Angels. The only other thing that irritated her right now was the presence of her former boyfriend whenever he tried to flirt with her when they were over and done with.

"I hear that there's some doubt that another Angel will ever show up," Kaji told her.

"If that's true, then Shinji put us all out of a job," the purple-haired woman responded, but because of the circumstances of how they all had to deal with the Third Angel, she couldn't believe that it was over as soon as it began, even in the middle of the night.

-x-

"…What must it be like to have nothing? Not even memories to visit, in the middle of the night…" Shinji heard the alien scientist muse on the television set outside the store window he stood in front of in the streets of Osaka that night.

He had just been walking around when he saw this store selling televisions showing a film on one of their flat screens about a blue alien and a little girl in need of a friend. It caught his attention, especially the little girl.

"…He's lost and all alone, and nobody wants him," he heard the girl say to the alien, referring to the duckling in the book he had shown her.

_I can sympathize with the duckling,_ he thought.

Swish! It was only a feeling, but it was enough to make Shinji realize that something was up and about beyond the horizon of the archipelago. Maybe a sign that one of Adam's remaining children, his messengers, were approaching, but that wouldn't have made any sense, as that Seed of Life couldn't have been anywhere near this nation; he would've known because of those memories from his near-death experiences that revealed Gendo possessing Adam in his hand.

_If the next one appears, it has to wise up and know that he's nowhere near this healing nation,_ he figured, but in the likely event that this messenger hadn't wised up enough in time, he would intervene if NERV made a move on it. _There is an order to our existence. A way to live, for better or for worse. This order is a power to restore and expand the balance. I will do all that I can to preserve this order._

-x-

"…So, this Angel's just beyond Japanese waters," went Ritsuko to Misato the next day, having discovered this through the use of the other MAGI around the world, "but it's not advancing any further towards land; it's just floating around over the sea."

"Like it's waiting for something?" Kaji questioned the faux-blond.

"Or deciding on what to do," she suspected. "After what happened with the Third Angel, it's probably taking precautionary measures."

But Misato was unsure; just because there was a new Angel out there, she wasn't just going to assume its behavior was anything like theirs.

"Have Asuka on standby," she ordered.

"And Rei?" Ritsuko asked her.

"She'll provide backup should it become necessary."

-x-

If people were any smarter, they would've seen that the new Angel, Shamshel, was thinking differently than it would've initially done. With the demise of Sachiel, the remaining Angels had to rethink their individual strategies. They also needed to think more radically. So this was why Shamshel decided not to attack this cluster of islands just yet, not until she could ascertain the spiritual energies that were an exact match to Adam's. Once this was ascertained, she and the other Angels would have the exact location of their father, find him and free him.

This could've been the first day of a new type of day. The Day of Adam, because this was to be a day of freedom for the all-father. Then every day would be the Day of Adam. Every day would be of freedom.

To be continued…

A/N: Still hungry for more?


	11. On Dragon Wings

Creation began on 11-02-15

Creation ended on 05-16-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An Ancient Guardian: On Dragon Wings

Through an old telescope he had found on the streets on the salvaged Washington place, Shinji saw the Angel known as Shamshel, and immediately recalled his memory of facing her. And he recalled the difficulty met with adjusting to a life under the thrall of NERV…and it just made him angry that he had been viewed as such a commodity in a life with no real future as he sat on the tall hill.

"I might've been the initial cause of Sachiel's demise," he expressed, "but I can prevent this messenger from paying an unnecessary price by keeping NERV at bay."

Taking his sword, he cut through the fabric of space and jumped through the schism.

-x-

"…So far, that's all we have on it," Misato informed Asuka, as she and Unit-02 arrived on the damaged coastal area just within viewing range of the Angel. "Until we know what it's up to, do not engage it."

Armed with a rifle, the redhead made sure she could have a shot at the Angel if it made a move that indicated hostility.

Suddenly, the Angel, no longer swimming in circles, shot like a bullet towards the land!

Asuka reacted to this change as a hostile and opened fire at the enemy. The bullets, however, just seemed to bounce right off the Angel's hide.

Shamshel emerged from the water and began hovering over the land, probably a good two feet, barely touching the ground. It unleashed a pair of energy-charged whips upon Unit-02, slicing the rifle in half.

"Shiest!" Asuka cursed, resorting to her Prog. Knife now.

But before she could retaliate, something happened in the air above them. Some sort of rip in the sky, like someone had taken a big knife and cut a hole into the fabric of space.

"What is that?" She asked Mistato.

"We have no idea," the woman responded.

Something then emerged from the hole in the sky. Some sort of…

"Gott im Himmel," Asuka gasped, never expecting to see a creature that was redder than the Angel was right this moment.

-x-

Returning from the dimension he traversed to in search of aid, Shinji had returned in the nick of time to find the Angel still in one piece as he held onto the nape of Osiris, the Sky Dragon of the the Egyptian God Monsters who ranked under Exodia in terms of power. The sight of the red Eva brought up another series of painful memories that never were, from his near-death experience. Mainly due to the aggressive girl that piloted it, always cruel to others, always pining after a man with an unshaven look. Oh, how he now resented how much people invested so much of themselves in these abominations to the point where it's all they believe they have because they have never tried to invest in other interests.

"Osiris," he uttered to the Sky Dragon, "we need to settle this without a need for death."

"Rrraaurgh," Osiris growled, wrapping itself around the ruins of a building. "Grrurgh!"

The Angel looked at the dragon, never seeing such a creature before, and noticed how a member of the Lilim species was riding atop it. There was a feeling of power and freedom…but also a feeling of acceptance, like this creature was willing to follow the human.

Suddenly, the blue gem on Osiris glowed and unleashed a wave of energy that spread around the entire surrounding environment, affecting everything with a blue tint.

Even Unit-02 was exposed by the energy.

"What was that, Misato?" Asuka questioned.

"We're trying to figure out what happened," Misato responded.

"I only ask that you hear me out, Angel of the Day," they heard Shinji's voice say to the Angel. "Speak to me."

The Angel stood up.

_You Lilim,_ a female voice spoke up, sounding as though it was inside their minds. _You know not what you do. You feel that the world revolves around you. You're scattered, divided, a plague. Despite your efforts to show that you're capable of change, you've not changed one bit in the time following the disgrace you've inflicted upon us. You captured our father, and we demand that he be returned._

"Your father? Adam. I can't speak for all of mankind when I speak for myself, but if he's returned to you…will your feud with the people cease?" Shinji asked the Angel.

-x-

"…The Third Child?" Ritsuko gasped.

"He's trying to reason with an Angel?" Kaji questioned. "And on some sort of dragon?"

"The biggest one I've ever seen," added Misato.

_If he is returned, there would be no need for further conflict,_ they heard the Angel say.

"Then I'll make sure he's returned to you, Angel of the Day," they heard Shinji say to it.

_Our father__…__returned by you? And how do you intend to do that?_

"I will find a way."

_And you would do this because?_

"I have gone through the process of metaphorical rebirth…and I'm seeing a world that was maimed by people deluded with the desires for unifying all souls for selfish reasons…but I've removed certain requirements to ensure that such an attempt cannot be achieved. No one shall be united in life as they can be in death."

_And you would willingly go against your kind?_

"I've already gone against them by turning away from them. My parents, may the gods have mercy upon their souls, the people they worked for, whom I'll never echo, my relatives, whom gave me nothing but apathy, and I have no place to call my home. I am a nomad, one that has no home. I am a ronin, a samurai without a master. I turned away from a future where I was cursed to live forever…with absolutely no reason to live."

_Then the return of our father shall fall upon you. You do that, and your kind, however scattered, however infectious and self-destructive__…__will be spared to go on until you end up destroying yourselves. You fail__…__and I won't be the only one that you will face._

-x-

Asuka felt disgusted by this happening. That the Third Child, a former cripple, attempting to negotiate with an enemy, and to save people he wasn't all that associated with, anymore. It…it felt disgraceful.

-x-

Shamshel, once she was done speaking to Shinji, turned away and returned to the sea, disappearing beneath the waves.

Shinji, setting foot off of Osiris onto a hillside, turned to face the Egyptian God Monster and bowed his head in gratitude.

"Your help was greatly appreciated, Lord Osiris," he praised the dragon. "Until we meet again."

Osiris then took to the sky, disappearing behind the clouds.

_I have to find Adam and return him to his children,_ Shinji thought, now needing to come up with a course of action to find the missing Seed of Life. _I gotta get help from those that specialize in tracking hard-to-find items and people__…__and I may need to build up my arsenal to better ensure that nothing severely disastrous happens later._

Thud! He heard large footsteps, and knew that Unit-02 was approaching.

-x-

"God, just look at him," went Hyuga, as the video feed from Unit-02 showed Shinji with a sword unlike anything ever seen or engineered before. "He looks like he could take on a S.W.A.T. team with that thing. With that creature that looked like a dragon, he could've probably took on Unit-02."

Even Yui saw him and pondered what he was thinking about right now. Or, rather, what he wasn't thinking about. And then, there was still how he was able to have access to these creatures that rivaled the Angels, but without the threat to mankind.

"The Third Child is leaving," said the Second Child informed them, as Shinji turned to walk away from the advancing Unit-02. "Permission to apprehend."

"Permission granted, but don't be hard on him," Misato obliged to the girl, and Yui wondered if Ms. Soryu was even capable of being soft on her son.

-x-

Shinji didn't have time for this, and ran down the hill away from Unit-02.

SLAM! One of its hands reached down and missed him as he ran towards the trees.

_I think I know just the creature to distract her,_ he thought as he reached for his sword.

-x-

Asuka was about to clear away the trees when she saw something rising from under them.

It looked like a person, but they wasn't the Third Child. They resembled some sort of doll, but without a face…and a girl-like doll face on its right shoulder and boy-like doll face on its left shoulder, and wearing a brightly-colored robe.

"What the heck is that thing?!" She questioned, watching as it raised its arms up and began waving them slowly in front of it. "What…"

Her perception started to feel off. Instead of this creature that just appeared, she saw someone she hadn't seen in many years.

"Mama?"

-x-

"What the Hell is this?" Ritsuko questioned, seeing exactly what the Second Child was seeing right now.

And so was the rest of Central Dogma present. Instead of a strange creature with no face, there was a woman in a hospital gown with long hair the same shade of red as Asuka's. And then, just as they all had a good look at her, her image was replaced with the faceless creature, which then disappeared from sight. In its place was a glowing message that read, _"SHINJI HAS FLED THE SCENE TO SAFETY."_

"What the shiest?!" Asuka demanded, and realized that she had been taken advantage of by the Third Child in order to escape. "Damn that boy! Damn him!"

-x-

Stepping out of the rift and entering the damaged town of a neighboring island in the Japanese archipelago, Shinji dropped to his knees as he took a short rest. While he might've been out of line when he had the Illusionist Faceless Mage show Asuka the illusion of what it was that her heart desired most in life, he promised himself that it was the only time he would use trickery like that to get away from an enemy like that. He wasn't even sure what it was she saw, as the mage's illusions were unique to whoever was exposed to its magic, meaning that while one person could've seen something they feared most, another person with them could've saw something else that was entirely different, either feared or desired.

"Find Adam, Shinji," he told himself. "Find Adam."

-x-

"…We can't find the Angel," Hyuga informed Misato, after two hours of being unable to detect the blue blood type of the Angel.

"There's no trace of it," added Shigeru.

"The nerve of that boy!" They all heard Asuka shouting as she returned to Central Dogma. "Is he trying to start something?!"

"Not logically," went Rei, expressing her logic of what the boy was up to. "He somehow managed to communicate with an Angel and discovered what they were after, and then attempted to bargain with the Angel, successfully ending a battle before it could start."

"And yet, it sounds like he's selling out on mankind by helping the enemy!"

That did sound like that was true, but it was hard to know if it was true. The boy had decimated NERV, but he stood up to an Angel in place of the Eva, and not because he had some sort of debt to the paramilitary agency; he only did it because he cherished the world, not the agency.

-x-

"The Fourth Angel was not disposed of," SEELE 12 announced to the council.

"Enough is enough," went SEELE 04. "We need to eliminate the Third Child, immediately!"

"Gather the best," expressed SEELE 01 to the rest of them. "Find the boy…and reduce him to nothing but a memory that nobody will recall."

-x-

Diving further and further in these nonexistent memories provided by his near-death experiences, Shinji, taking refuge in an abandoned building, was able to ascertain the person that had been most likely responsible for Gendo having obtained Adam in at least one other life that was a thing of the past.

"Ryoji Kaji," he uttered, holding his left palm up and conjuring a fiery projection of a man in his early-thirties with an unshaven face. "If anything, you were part of the direct cause that caused the Third Impact and Instrumentality Project that didn't have to take place. If you had access to Adam and was able to hand him over to a bastard like Gendo, then you knew where he was, right from the start. Your stupidity will be your doom…but if you help me keep my word to the Angels, you may have a shot at redemption. Peace for all through the forgiveness of damaged hearts and souls…and grand redemption through the rebirth of the maimed world."

To be contined…

A/N: It was Osiris/Slifer that won the original poll because he got two votes!


	12. Channel your Wraith

Creation began on 05-22-16

Creation ended on 04-17-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An Ancient Guardian: Channel your Wraith

A/N: I want Shinji to have access to other monsters that I've never seen.

They were probably not his best attempt at creating a pursue and capture group, but Shinji was impressed by the selection of monsters that were an embodiment of stealth and evasion. Warrior and beast wraiths that were more alive than they were believed to be dead.

"Thank you for coming to my aid at a time like this," he told the monsters in front of him in the derelict parking garage in the decayed building of the derelict city. "You each have the echo of the memory of the guy from the life I will never live out, so you know what you need to do. Search for the man called Ryoji Kaji and bring him to me. You may use whatever methods you have at your disposal to apprehend him, but under no circumstances is he or anyone else to be harmed to the point of death. You understand me?"

"Hai!" a black ninja with a red scarf uttered in response to him, and then threw a smoke bomb to the ground, creating a smokescreen that lasted fifteen seconds.

When it cleared, Shinji was alone and the ninjas and beasts were gone, off to do what he asked of them to do.

"I guess I might as well show my face around Tokyo-3," he told himself, and used his sword to cut a rip in space and dove into it with a specific location in mind. _I hope I know what I'm doing._

-x-

Misato, even though she was now the head of NERV, still acted as a slob on her off-hours. She had just gotten a few hours off and wanted to make sure that Pen-Pen was okay.

"How are you this evening, Ms. Katsuragi?" She heard a voice that seemed full of life, and looked up at the door of her apartment, seeing Shinji leaning against the railing behind him.

"You…you have a lotta nerve showing your face around here after what you did to NERV," she told him, angry that he showed up.

"If I hadn't, then we'd be no better off than how I am hoping everyone will be because of the borrowed time I bought from the Angels to return Adam to them in exchange for being left alone," Shinji defended his actions.

"Your choices put your father in the nuthouse."

"And how is what happened to him after I renounced my ties to the Ikaris my problem?"

"Your mother being restored to life."

"It's on her."

"You destroyed the MAGI, our only supercomputer, and an Evangelion…with an army of machines! How could someone like you have access to machines that don't exist anywhere in the world and use them to tear down the paramilitary agency tasked with facing the Angels?"

"Would you even believe me if I told you? Anyway, what I did was better than what would've happened had I stayed at NERV as some lackey to an uncaring maniac that was only interested in his own goals, confined to a wheelchair or not. Countless people would've died because of that particular Evangelion that housed the soul of the woman I renounced as my mother, who would've condemned herself to eternity as a worthless, piece of shit testament of mankind's existence to outlast this solar system because she believed that it was worth doing. The Angels would've caused further death and destruction looking for Adam, who I'm now looking for in order to give mankind their absolute future free from the fear of them. And I would've been made to kill someone I only dared to call a friend, against my will, because of that bastard monster if he was left in charge…and you would've died trying to get me to Unit-01. Many of what I feel are the worst parts of having memories of a life I'll never live. Near-death experiences tend to reveal a lot when you experience them more than once and start to sort them out. Whoever said that your life flashes before your eyes when you're about to die, they're right…even when you don't die…and what you see isn't always the past only. So now, I gotta ask you this: What are you going to do? Are you going to call the MIB to apprehend me…or are you going to try and shoot me with the gun under your coat?"

Misato took out her gun and aimed it at his head.

"Give me one reason not to cap you in your legs?" She asked him.

"Do I look like I'm out for blood, Ms. Katsuragi?" He responded. "Was I out for blood when I brought machine-monsters to NERV and tore it all down? Nobody died because I told them not to kill anyone. I wasn't capable of any of this until after I got help to regain my legs, retake my freedom…and I still haven't the will to kill anyone. It's not in me to do such an act. Even with a sword, I don't have it in me to kill you, even when you raise a gun at my head. I'm just looking for your old boyfriend because he did something wrong in my near-death experience's memories, something that led to the end of the world. I just want to know what he's done so I can keep people from suffering. So make your choice."

Misato lowered her gun and sighed.

"What happened to you?" She asked him. "The medical report I read explained the damage done to your legs and spine was severe. You'd never walk again for the rest of your life because of the incident. Yet, you're walking like before. Not even a limp. No medical treatment could've brought you back from a place there was no coming back from."

"As I've said before, I've had help to regain my legs and freedom. Elves, water sprites, alchemists, magicians, even machines specialized in healing practices. I'm forever grateful to these beings for helping me. My mind elevated, my spiritual boundaries deepened…and my body healed. And it's because of their aid that I'm helping to undo the madness that plagues this world, one step at a time."

"And who made you the overseer of everyone?"

"I'm no overseer of anyone. If someone higher up wanted me to play the role of some overseer, then it would be true that someone higher up actually wanted an agency like NERV to recruit blind, deaf and dumb followers like cattle to be sacrificed later on by others. The disgrace and reduction of your agency's personnel and resources limits your poor chances of being killed later on. I still see it all happening, you know, like a nightmare that refuses to end itself. Everyone within the Geo-Front getting slaughtered by the JSSDF, trained killers, because nobody at NERV was trained to fight people. You dying from a gunshot but taking your own life to kill a few of these soldiers…with a grenade. Your faux-blond friend getting shot to death by that bastard of a father…after being betrayed by the would-be ghost in the machine of her poor excuse of a mother. Heh…and this is all because of some lousy belief my poor excuse for a mother had that I was the one destined to decide the fate of the world. That's not something you put on a guy that was made to watch his mother play legal dead at the age of four and get ditched by his father right after! You want to do something to decide everyone's fate when the world doesn't need to end, find someone willing to bend over for you."

Misato sighed and decided to answer his question concerning her old boyfriend.

"He's at NERV HQ, but if they see you, you're a goner. You're not exactly a popular person there after what happened." She told him.

"I'm not after him for what he did in my near-death memories. I just want the whereabouts of the First Angel he brought with him because he's most likely to know." Shinji explained.

"The First Angel? What makes you think he'd know something?"

"Because, with the exception of Unit-01, the other Evas are just abominations made from the salvaged remains of the First Angel, a deranged attempt at protecting yourselves from what you believe are the enemy. Maybe it's the lesser of two evils, but there is such a thing as crossing too many lines that you can't uncross, even if you wanted to. If he knows something, he will tell me, and if he doesn't, I'll back off. Simple as that."

Shinji then raised his sword up and cut a rip in the space behind him, stepping backwards into it, and waving goodbye to Misato.

"Son of a bitch," she sighed, wishing she had Kaji's number just to warn him that Shinji was going to come after him.

-x-

Stepping out of the rip and into the hallway of one of the corridors of NERV HQ, Shinji looked around and sighed at the feelings of despair and disgust at being back here. He truly hated this place, along with the horrid, phantom memories of the life he never lived, of the people screaming as their lives were ended by the rain of bullets and flames. Even though he had undid that future, he couldn't forget about those awful visions. He held his head in his left hand, taking a while to clear his mind of the coldest memories, reminding himself that he was still a long way from being fully recovered from trauma of the memories…and completely rid of his former parents' twisted agendas that served no other purpose than to violate everyone.

Suddenly, he turned to his left and raised his sword up, aiming its end at a plugsuit-clad Rei Ayanami, who was standing in front of him.

"You're the Third Child," she uttered to him. "I am…"

"Rei Ayanami, pilot of Evangelion Unit-00, the First Child, but your name, and your face, is nothing more than a facade to deceive those around you," he cut her off. "I know who you… I know what you are… I am not the Third Child, anymore. My name is Shinji, former only child of Gendo Rokubungi-Ikari and Yui Ikari. What do you want?"

"You're not authorized to be in this base," she expressed, devoid of emotion. "Orders are to bring you to Central Dogma for questioning."

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to pass on that. I have only one life to live, and I wish to live it free of the past, of NERV, of all things associated with Evangelion."

With that, Shinji cut open another rip in space beside him and leapt into it as it closed, leaving the albino girl alone in the hall. He reappeared on the top of one of the command bridge in Central Dogma, in the presence of many people that bothered to continue working at NERV, including Yui and Ritsuko.

"Oh, I didn't want to come here," he uttered, but then noticed the unshaven man from his phantom memories behind the redhead girl that would never be more than just a redhead with the things he did to change everyone's fate. "Fate is a funny thing."

-x-

They couldn't believe that Shinji had returned to NERV after tearing it down.

"Why have you returned, Shinji?" Yui asked him.

"Why?" He responded. "Why, indeed, Ms. Ikari. Why, I'm here to ensure that everyone's future is resolved to be free of the Angels. Nothing helps more than information. Information that's kept from others…like the information he's withholding (he points his sword end to the unshaven man behind the redhead)."

"Me?" Kaji gasped. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Now, you don't know that. You don't know how to answer a question until after it's been spoken, Ryoji Kaji. You see, I only know you from memories of a life I never lived, whether I was crippled physically or emotionally. _'The only thing that we know is that we know nothing__…__and that is the highest flight of human wisdom'_. But you know something that could help preserve this world that slowly returns to life with every new day that comes and goes. I want Adam."

It was only for a moment, but Shinji couldn't deny it. He saw Kaji's eyes falter; the unshaven man knew something about Adam's whereabouts.

"I don't know what you're insinuating," the man responded, but Shinji's expression only grew more negative.

"You're lying," he uttered back. "You've seen him."

"Why don't we all calm down?" Ritsuko suggested, though Shinji wasn't convinced that it was even a suggestion.

"Yeah, except I think you mean something else, Dr. Akagi. I'm afraid I'm going to have to pass on that."

Shinji then looked up…and was glad that he did.

Pop! Something small fell to the floor and exploded, releasing a black smokescreen that enveloped Ritsuko, Yui, Kaji and Asuka while Shinji backed away.

"Ah, we're being attacked again!" One of the technicians screamed.

It was one of the warriors that Shinji summoned for their assistance in finding and apprehending Ryoji Kaji, the Armed Ninja, throwing smoke bombs everywhere Shinji wasn't to obscure everyone's vision.

"Whoa! Hey!" Kaji gasped, feeling someone strong enough to pick him up and move quickly grab him and move him away through the smokescreen. "Help!"

Shinji slashed open another rip in space and jumped into it. Exiting out the other end, he found himself outside of the command bridge in Central Dogma, standing in front of the Strike Ninja, holding a struggling Kaji who had been bound and gagged.

The Armed Ninja leapt out of the chamber as the smoke dissipated, bowing to Shinji.

"Thank you, you two," he praised the ninja, and then opened another rip in space. "We have who we came for. Now, we just need the information he has. Let's get going."

The two ninja then jumped into the rip, taking the reluctant Kaji with them, and Shinji followed them as it closed up, leaving no trace.

-x-

"…So, he just came in here and took Kaji?" Misato asked Ritsuko and Asuka in the former's office.

"We never even touched him," Asuka responded, wondering what that boy was going to do to Kaji after he was done with him. "Why would he want Kaji so much if he was done with NERV? It doesn't make any sense."

"Lately, nothing has made any sense. How he recovered the use of his legs so quickly, how he knows things he shouldn't have known about, or how he could control these…these things we knew nothing about when he came back. None of it made any sense."

"He believed he knew something about the First Angel," went Ritsuko. "Probably the only reason he took him."

-x-

Shinji didn't trust Kaji's ability to get out of the situation he now found himself in, but he wasn't going to take anything to chance, which was why he put him here in this dark place, surrounded by various beasts and tied to a folding chair by energy bindings instead of chains or ropes. This way, he couldn't escape and they would have all the time they need to resolve this matter with the Angels with the least amount of bloodshed.

"So," he said to Kaji, sitting in front of him with his sword held down. "I guess we can skip the formalities and just see where this takes us."

No longer having a gag in his mouth, Kaji uttered, "You can't possibly be human."

"Oh, I'm very human. I'm just blessed to have received help from those I respect for their services very much. I don't take their gifts for granted. I'm trying not to throw away the life they restored to me." Shinji clarified his status to him.

"Yet, you piloted an Evangelion with no training and no mobility in your legs."

"Unless you call falling down dumb and under bad medication and being forced into a situation you shouldn't have been forced into to begin with piloting, you are clearly backing up the wrong horse into someone else's barn! That…was when I had no capacity for being able to refuse, even when I wanted to. That…was when I just wanted to give up living and move on, never caring how my life ended, so long as it ended. But then, I was saved, and it wasn't because of that woman that dares to call herself my mother. It was because of the Ancient Guardian that made it so that this planet is truly beginning to return to a state of rejuvenation, where life begins to reclaim the wastelands that were once made barren. In the absence of science and technology, one must turn to a different power that grants a different kind of hope. Now, I don't have any hope of an ending for myself where I end up with my disgraceful parents and we're able to reconcile our differences…or even just sit down together for tea and cookies, but I hope that when all's said and done for the good of this world, I'll be able to lay down my bearings and enjoy the rest of my life, knowing that I did something that was successful and mattered, even if nobody will accept me for me."

One of the creatures came from out the shadows, resembling a sort of tan or yellowish squid, and it encircled Kaji in one of its tentacles. On it was some sort of scarlet scorpion with a golden eye on its back and a large mouth.

"I only know who you are from my near-death experience memories of a different life, but they certainly tie into what's going on in this life that is different from what could've been," Shinji told him, and the scorpion creature jumped off the tentacle and onto Kaji's lap.

"Aaah!" He screamed, fearing that the creature would bite or sting him.

"Oh, would you chill?!" Shinji asked him, not the least bit worried. "Nobody here is a killer! They're not going to assassinate you or anything! You think I'd go through the trouble of finding you just to waste you?! It's interrogation! Information gathering! Once we know what we need, I'll let you go, simple as that."

The scorpion crawled up to Kaji's left shoulder where it then perched on it, placing its left claw against the man's neck.

"And what do you want to know about?" He asked Shinji.

"The whereabouts of Adam, the First Angel," the boy answered him. "I need to find him and return him to the Angels to ensure mankind's future will be free of them. Where is he?"

"I swear, I don't know."

"And I swear, I don't believe you. Pinch him."

The scorpion then pinched Kaji in his neck, causing him pain.

"Aaaahh!" He screamed, and the creature let go, allowing him to ease down. "Aah…aah…"

"We can go any way you like, Mr. Kaji," Shinji told him. "I can have the Mystical Beast of Serket pinch you on your sensitive areas until you decide to talk. I can have you waterboarded by the Fiend Kraken and some Great Whites, induce shock therapy with Mega Thunderballs or have you burned by the Flame Swordsman. Torture, even the very fear of it, Mr. Kaji, isn't worth keeping quiet about how to find something or someone to end something for good with the least amount of bloodshed. Neither is it worth dying for."

"You're out of your mind if you think I'll say anything you want to hear."

"Well, it's not like anyone's going to come to your rescue any time soon, either. Nobody knows where we are, and even if they did, access is tricky if not impossible to obtain. And as for what you think about me… There is a fine line between clarity and insanity. In an insane world, a sane person must appear insane, but in a sane world, even a sane person must appear insane. So which world are we in? Are we in an insane world…or are we in a sane one? You tell me."

Suddenly, a different creature appeared from behind Shinji, flying out of the shadows and in front of Kaji. It was…a green-skinned woman with a purple, pointed hat and no legs, replaced by a floating, green tail. She was some type of ghost!

"My pretty!" She shouted at him.

"Aaaahh!" He screamed again, but then she covered his mouth with her left hand, silencing him.

"Was I too much?" She asked Shinji.

"Did he wet himself?" He asked her back. "If he didn't, you didn't scare him enough, ma'am, but you certainly surprised me. My heart jumped."

The ghost lady smiled at him.

"He's the one in charge," she told Kaji about Shinji. "He can decide what we do to you here, out there, anywhere. A merciful soul, a gentle soul, tortured by the cruelty of others in an uncaring and indifferent world that was only possible because of people like you. But now, now…he has become one with the world, blessed by the Ancient Guardian that gathered us all, to reach into the past, the present and future to undo the sickness that plagues the world. You continue to persist in helping him get closer to his objective…and to the peace that he deserves that nobody, not even the failures that gave him life could give him, then you are nothing more than an extension to the problems that exist."

-x-

"…I don't think Shinji's going to kill him," said Misato to Ritsuko in the latter's office.

"How can you be so certain of that?" Ritsuko asked her.

"Because Shinji came to see me earlier. Even after everything that's happened and everything that's been done to him, he hasn't made any choices where people have to pay the ultimate price in any goal. He simply can't take someone's life, even if he was ordered to."

"Yet, he's content with ruining NERV's reputation and causing problems for all of us because of his parents."

"If Kaji tells him what he wants to know, Shinji will more than likely let him go."

"And what if Kaji decides not to? We don't even know where to find them."

"Then may the gods have mercy on his poor soul."

To be continued…


	13. Who I am to myself now

Creation began on 04-17-17

Creation ended on 06-04-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An Ancient Guardian: Who I am to myself now

Taking a break from the torture methods he was using to get Kaji to reveal the location of Adam, Shinji sighed and looked out one of the many windows of the location he was using, looking at the stars and moonlight. There was something about the dark right now that helped to cover his tracks and keep anyone looking for Kaji from finding them. But it always stayed in the shelter of the night where it was its most powerful.

There was a time when he got here earlier, before the encounter with the Angel of the Day, where he would take the time to think about his past, about how far he had come to escape the fate his parents had dealt him before he was even born. Sometimes, he had to wonder about the people that he would never know, anymore…and how their lives were changed by the lack of a need for NERV and the Evas and the decreased conflict with the Angels.

Kensuke Aida, Hikari Horaki, Toji Suzuhara, the classmates that hassled him when they found out he was the unlucky pilot. Oh, yes, he did wonder about them every now and then, often pitying himself for closing that door to protect them and himself from the unforgivable cruelty that would've been inflicted upon them.

"Hopefully, they're far away from Tokyo-3," he told himself. "They, like everyone else that didn't ask to get dragged into the senseless conflict instigated by the previous generation deserve to live free of the sins they created."

He looked away from the window to his right and saw seven, bright eyes looking right at him.

"Grr," something growled, emerging from the darkness around them.

It was hardly humanoid, with green, slimy skin, sharp claws, and four legs.

"Shadow Ghoul," Shinji greeted; he had met this creature seven times already and still had a difficult time putting up a brave face in front of it because of the intensity of fear it ignited. "How may I help you this evening?"

Shadow Ghoul brought its claws together and a small warp formed in between them, revealing Kaji, who was trying to get free of his bonds out of fear at the sight of the Drillago, Ancient Tool and Patrol Robo monsters in front of him to excite fear from him.

"Call them off," Shinji told the creature. "I need him to confess to the whereabouts, not be scared to death. He's no good to anyone if he's dead."

In the warp, the three machines stopped advancing towards Kaji and disappeared into the ground.

"We'll try something else entirely," he suggested. "Go release his bonds. Have him run out the room. Let him explore. He can't go anywhere I won't know."

-x-

Kaji was certain he had almost crapped his pants when the humanoid creature with drills everywhere had almost touched his nose.

Then, some sort of new humanoid emerged from the darkness on the floor. A knight with spikes everywhere and two, large swords.

"You try his patience," the knight told him, and swung the sword in his left hand. "But we have all the time in the world."

Snip! Kaji's bonds came undone.

"You can run, but you won't be able to hide. We're here, we're there, we're everywhere. But don't hesitate to feel like you're not trapped in one place. Go on, feel free to explore your dwellings."

Kaji then ran up some steps that Shinji used to leave the room earlier, hearing the knight chuckle.

"It won't make any difference," he heard him say. "We…have an eternity to learn the truth."

The last word uttered reverberated throughout the hall as the unshaven man ran like a bat out of Hell.

-x-

"…Do you think the Third Child won't try to kill him if he persists in refusing to tell him what he wants to know?" Asuka asked Misato in the former office of Gendo Ikari.

"When it comes to what Shinji is suddenly capable of, I can't guarantee anything that Shinji may do won't end up maiming Kaji," she responded.

-x-

This wasn't possible. He thought he was inside some sort of building, but when he thought he had entered a parking garage, he was horrified with the sight of a large, unholy labyrinth in front of him. It was like the boy was playing with him or something, only without the basic torture methods.

A small, spinning top came near him and started projecting a holograph of the boy.

"You know, this can all end," Shinji told him. "Just tell me where Adam is being held, and you can go home or wherever it is you reside nowadays."

"I keep telling you, I know nothing," Kaji told him back, and then kicked the spinning top away.

"Oh! You're going to wish you hadn't done that!" Shinji's voice rang. "Gods of the Labyrinth, answer my call!"

Above the labyrinth, in the dark ceiling that seemed to have no end, a trio of yellow, green and blue lights appeared…and took form. The yellow and green lights appeared as large, armored forms with arms while the blue light appeared as a sort of large, disembodied head with arms. Each bore a symbol on its form, representing a different element.

"It is time to enter the labyrinth," the disembodied head announced, raising its arms up.

Suddenly, the ground began to shake and Kaji was forced down the steps as water flooded the room.

"Aaaaahh!" He screamed.

"We are Sanga of the Thunder, Kazejin of the Wind and Suijin of the Water," the yellow, armored form announced. "Against our combined might, mortal men stand no chance."

"Should we meld our might in eternal light, you face an unstoppable blight," the green, armored form added, and a strong breeze entered the labyrinth, covering some of the water in ice.

"Only the truth shall set you free from pain beyond description," the blue head said, and the freezing water evaporated, "or else we'll mark your grave with your inscription. Welcome to the Labyrinth Wall! A maze with many twists and turns as you struggle to find the way out!"

The spinning top that Kaji had kicked away returned and Shinji's hologram appeared again.

"I've done my homework on mazes, and they're usually meant to confuse people that explore them or get lost in them," Shinji told him. "It's not really much of a challenge for you to find your way out unless you have obstacles in your way, which is why I'll be in here looking for you…with some appreciated help from those that specialize in dealing with mazes. How long do you suspect you'll last…being watched, being followed…and hunted down like prey, Mr. Kaji?"

Kaji frowned and kicked the top away from where he stood; he was getting frustrated with this boy.

"You think you can break me, boy?!" He shouted. "You think you can break me?!"

-x-

Sighing, Shinji, standing in front of a second Holograh, grabbed his sword and shield.

"Time to play again," he said.

-x-

Every corner seemed the same as the previous corner. And he felt like he'd been walking in circles for three hours. Even looking up at the dark ceiling where the three deities or whatever they were didn't help him one bit. How Kaji managed to piss this child off before ever meeting him, he wasn't sure of.

RUMBLE! He heard something loud in the air and felt it in the ground and walls.

"He has taken a Labyrinth Tank into the maze and is advancing towards your current location, mortal man," said the disembodied head to Kaji. "You should run before the creatures he sent in before, the Dungeon Worm and Jirai Gumo, find you and hold you for him."

Kaji then ran further down the path he took and turned a corner.

"OH!" He gasped, stopping before he fell into a large hole in the middle of the path.

Something then emerged from it. It was some sort of massive worm! With a large, circular mouth lined with long teeth and small eyes surrounding it.

"Rrrrrrraurgh!" The worm growled, looking down at him. "Rrrraaurgh!"

"Aaah!" Kaji screamed, seeing an alternate path to take, and ran down it before the worm got him.

Looking back, he saw the worm slithering after him!

What he didn't see in front of him, however, was the large spider web that had been set up in record time for him.

"Oopf!" He grunted, running into the web, getting stuck. "Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!"

"Daaaao!" He heard something from behind the corner on the other side of the web.

Something emerged from it. A large spider, way too big to be an ordinary spider. "Daaao!"

"Gah! Grr!" Kaji grunted, trying to get free.

"Rrrraugh! Rraugh!" The worm from earlier hissed as it appeared behind him.

They were both mere inches away from him, and he knew he was going to bite the dust soon enough.

"No, Shinji, please!" He begged, shutting his eyes. "I'll tell you! I'll tell you!"

The spider slashed at him, but all he felt was air hitting his body. It didn't even hurt. The webbing came loose, the spider climbed over the wall, leaving a damaged spinning top behind.

"Oh, this was too easy, Mr. Kaji," Shinji's hologram told the man. "As I've said before, I won't kill you. That's not who I am. Maybe it's who those has-beens that were once my parents were, but I won't cross that line. I can still remember the ugly sensation of being made to crush an Entry Plug with someone still inside it, killing them against my will…and you held that against me, said I didn't deserve to be happy, just like you and your old flame…because of people whose lives were forfeit due to the choices made by others."

On his knees, Kaji uttered, "What…what are you talking about?"

"You traded your brother and friends for your own life in the aftermath of Second Impact," he revealed to the unshaven man. "Misato's father sacrificed himself to save her life after neglecting her and his wife for years. I'm trying not to be so judgmental, but who are you to say who deserves to be happy…and who doesn't? I'm not happy about my childhood. I'm not happy about who my parents were and what they tried to do with me. But I'll tell you something I am happy about. Walking, running, being free to express myself, to say all that I've wanted to say and go where I want. I'm happy that I was saved from a pit of isolation and misery by those I'm eternally grateful to. Hell, I'm even happy to be away from NERV and the Eva. They can't run me."

"I'm surprised you were able to pilot the Eva at all when you were handicapped," Kaji told him, though Shinji felt the man was being disrespectful towards him.

"Which is why I say this way of catching you is too easy," he told him. "You're not pushed enough to really tell me what I need to know in order to save this world. You say you'll tell me, but I can tell you're just lying. So I'm going to give you a five-minute head start before I let the Dungeon Worm and Jirai Gumo come after you again. But, in order to spice things up, let's improve the labyrinth!"

The whole place shook…and the walls sank and grew in various, random ways.

He felt like he was sinking into the ground…and then rising up into the air…at least four times.

"Oh, Kami, what is wrong with this kid?" He questioned.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," Shinji's hologram told him.

When the shaking and shifting ceased, Kaji found that he was within a different kind of maze. Instead of seeing just hallways of stone, he saw stone halls and stairways leading to open doors.

"This is the first time in a long time that Labyrinth Wall has taken on such an advanced form," said Shinji to him. "But take a look at the metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel in front of you."

Kaji found himself on a formation of the maze that was high enough to see much of the setting…and saw the other end of the maze where a large gate was standing.

"To reach that gate is to escape from the Labyrinth Wall. But just because you can see the way out doesn't mean you'll get to it. With the maze being changed, there comes a new wrinkle to the goal that is to get out. Just as a puzzle has shifts in its formation, so, too, does the number of obstacles lurking in the shadows…and at the end."

Because Kaji was also high enough to see the maze, he was high enough to see the three elementals float towards the gate.

"Elements of Thunder, Water and Wind," Shinji chanted, "Sanga, Suijin, Kazejin begin! Meld your powers in eternal light! Show this fool your unstoppable might!"

They merged into one large form, looking over the maze, and the unshaven man now wished he had pissed himself from the sight in front of him.

"What…in God's creation?" He gasped.

"They are now one," Shinji explained the new, fused result. "Three beings in one form. He is now pain beyond description. He shall mark the metaphorical graves with your inscription. I present to you the Gate Guardian!"

It looked like it was still the three elementals, but the blue one had become an armored form of legs with a head where the lower waist would've been, with the green one in the middle and losing its arms and the larger, yellow one fitting atop the green one, making them look like some sort of action figure.

"As your only cheat, he shall stand by the gate leading out of the maze, allowing you see how far you need to get," Shinji told Kaji. "The bigger he seems up close, the closer you are to escaping. Should you encounter any monsters along the way, they'll chase you for a while, but you'll probably wish they had done more to you. There are only two ways this current situation of yours ends: You escaping the maze by reaching the exit…or telling me where Adam is being held. You take a chance and gamble with your limited options. Either way, I leave it to you. Oh, and you should look behind you towards another formation of stairs."

Kaji looked…and couldn't believe his eyes. Further away from where he was standing, a relatively good distance, was Shinji himself, standing atop a large, tank-like drill with his sword at his side, waving at him.

"I'll be in the maze, too," he revealed. "We might be at this for a while, but don't worry about the would-be deprivation of a growing man's needs. You'll find those as you search for your way out. See you real soon."

When the hologram stopped, he saw the real Shinji get into the tank, riding it down some steps.

Kaji now knew he was messing with someone that had resources other people could only dream of having…and was probably only scratching at the surface what he was capable of with his newfound freedom and power. But still, he couldn't risk telling this boy anything he wanted to know, not when there were Angels around that needed to be dealt with. So he ran down the steps in front of him, desperate to reach the exit.

-x-

Within the Labyrinth Tank, Shinji thought once more of what he had gained and lost over time in this new life he was leading…and how different it was from other lifetimes lived differently. He had discovered, even though it was only accidentally, that there was such a thing as a multiverse, with an infinite number of worlds that were similar to this one…and how different everyone was in each one due to causality differences. It wasn't exactly like he could travel between alternate universes, but more like seeing them in the form of dreams or visions, waking from one and seeing another that was just as vast and different from what he once knew. If each lifetime, each universe, all of it were just the pieces of a shattered mirror, then the frame in which the reflective glass had been held in probably represented the whole of each fragment…and each piece was just one whole that had somehow been shattered by an external force.

_I don't know how those lives got to be any better than mine,_ he thought, turning a corner in the hall he was taking in the tank. _Each version of me in a different world under a different influence that's as real as this one. But each one makes sense in many respects. They represent different possibilities, impossibilities, with an infinite number of solutions for each situation._

He had seen universes where he had been a part of a family with almost no blood ties that still cared about each other greatly, or as a broken soul that resorted to killing the majority of his family because they pushed him over the edge of sanity, a universe where he was a time-displaced child that saved a city he had never seen from a radioactive dinosaur in the Nineteen-Fifties, even a few universes where, to his surprise, he wasn't related to the Ikaris at all, but had been taken from his parents by them and passed off as one of theirs until the woman that was his real mother found him and came back for him or where he was a girl instead of a boy or even had a twin sibling of the sort. Some of these alternate lives actually impressed Shinji with what they resulted in half the time; the freedom from the fate his parents wanted, closure for the injustice he had been dealt, reunification with the people of his lost or stolen past, even…hope.

_It would be nice to have a future like some of those universes, _Shinji thought, a small smile forming on his face, as the Labyrinth Tank turned right around a corner and going up a flight of steps. _The power to defy fate and change one's destiny means nothing if you're not entitled to the promise of happiness._

He made the tank stop so he could get out and stretch his legs.

"The sooner that unshaven man reveals the truth to me, the sooner everyone can put their fears of the end of the world behind them," he sighed, then reached inside the tank for his sword.

-x-

"It's been three days now," said Yui to Misato in her office. "How can we be sure that he hasn't already killed him and done away with his remains?"

"Do you honestly believe that your son, however different he has become in the time since he disappeared from the motel fire, regained the use of his legs, brought a crippling blow to NERV and kidnapping Kaji, would just kill him?" Misato questioned her. "He said so himself to me. He's not even sure he has it in him to take someone's life, no matter how cruel people were to him in his life. He had that sword with him…but he never used it on anyone. I doubt it's just for show if he's able to use it to get from one place to another rather quickly."

"Dimensional travel is the theory. Whenever he cuts the space around him, he creates a temporary schism between where he is and wherever it is he's going, able to displace matter and energy during this transition to and from."

"That sounds like that teleportation stuff they talk about in old, sci-fi sitcoms."

"It does, but there appears to be no science involved in the way he does it. But still, don't you think that it's possible he could've killed him?"

"Honestly, I don't believe that Shinji will ever cross that line. If he's that determined to keep the world safe from the Angels by returning Adam to them, he'll do whatever he has to in order to achieve his goal…with the least amount of suffering."

"Everything happens as it must."

For some reason, Misato was mildly offended by what Yui said. It was the way she said it, like her son coming to NERV to pilot the Eva…was predetermined or something.

"You can't really picture your son piloting the Eva on a regular basis around here, can you?" She asked Yui, wanting her answer.

"I really can't picture what he was going to do here after everything he did do here," she responded.

"Maybe some wounds aren't meant to be healed."

-x-

Kaji thought that Shinji was being at the least limited in terms of resources in the maze. It probably had something to do with the fact that he was currently working at a paramilitary agency. The food he was told he would find were comprised of simple field rations, nothing that needed to be refrigerated or heated and provided energy; he could only assume that Shinji probably limited himself to the same thing since they were both in the maze.

_What does he really think he can achieve by handing over the First Angel to the Angels? _He wondered. _How does he know that he won't trigger Third Impact by doing so?_

"Because all he has is faith," he heard a female voice utter a few feet away from where he sat on the ground. "It's not a game of chance or deception. If he puts his faith in those that help him, he can accomplish the goal that has only everyone's future in mind."

He looked to his left and saw a blue-haired woman dressed in a robe of blue and green and a large hat with a star on it.

"Who are you?" He asked her.

"I am the Lady of Faith," she introduced herself to him, "and I believe in what Shinji is doing."

"How can you even be sure of what he's doing is the right thing?"

"As I said before, all one has is faith…and he has seen the world end one too many a time that it can become an old tune that is nothing but a broken loop that goes on and on. To have faith in one's power to defy fate, to change destiny or what have you, is to have faith in the unseeable future that can be changed for the better."

"And thinking that Adam's return to the Angels will just end the threat they represent to the human race? How can he simply have faith in that?"

"Because people are not the only ones that face the end of existence if he is unable to return Adam. The life that is slowly returning to the planet, the plants and animals human beings take for granted will return back to the abyss of oblivion, just as spring falls to summer. He has seen snow and the leaves succumb to fall. His only great fear that he has left in this life he has with no ties to family or a place to call home…is the shame of failure. The Ikaris failed him…and he doesn't wish to fail those he feels he can never meet, in this life or the next."

Then, the Lady of Faith vanished, like a ghost, from his sight, leaving him alone.

"If he fails…everything everywhere falls," he continued to hear her voice, "and to fail is to be unable to stand in the sunlight with those around you."

-x-

"…My God," said some of the NERV technicians as they were being shown recently-acquired pictures and footage of plants and animals from around the world that were once believed to be lost forever after Second Impact.

"It's not possible," went Ritsuko, trying to disbelieve the footage of large whales and elephants being displayed on several monitors.

"Maybe it has something to do with that creature that appeared the night the Third Angel attacked," a male technician suggested.

Even Misato was finding it hard to comprehend how something as impossible as an Egyptian-themed behemoth appearing and destroying an Angel with enough force to shift the planet back onto its proper axis was able to slowly restore life that was taken fifteen years ago.

"The South Pole," went another female technician, "it looks like it's starting to experience patterns of global cooling."

Then she thought back to that day she hated above all days. That awful day that nobody else alive could ever fully understand the magnitude of trauma it caused. It was a memory she wanted only to forget most of the time. The day half the world was taken away.

-x-

Laying on the ground wasn't as pleasant as laying on a mattress was, but Shinji didn't complain. He enjoyed that he was able to get up and lay down without difficulty in his legs, and was reminded that being able to sleep or rest in a safe place was another privilege people valued since the Stone Age. Even though he had obtained all of this power because of Exodia, he didn't want to abuse it by getting things that fed one's desires instead of one's needs. And he still had a job to do before he could truly walk away and never worry about looking back.

Looking up at the dark, uneven ceiling above the maze, he let himself drift off. It was…relatively soothing and allowed him to better digest the rations he had eaten an hour ago.

_I wonder if any of my other alternates from the other universes are able to sleep like this,_ he wondered.

As he slept, he was visited by the Lady of Faith, who sat down in front of him.

_Yes, you fear failure above all in your life now, _she thought, gently caressing his face. _You no longer desire your father's acceptance, you no longer care for your mother's beliefs, not even a tiny plead for their forgiveness. You succeed in stopping the children of Adam by returning him to his children, and you break down the remaining foundations of their agendas that were meant to end the world instead of preserve it. You do this…and you'll know how much better you are than those that came before you._

-x-

"…It's been a week now," said Misato to Ritsuko and Yui in her office. "There hasn't been any report or even a sighting of either Shinji, Kaji or the Angels."

"Some people are wondering if the boy did go and kill the man," the faux-blond informed her.

"I doubt that he would cross that line."

"We don't know what he's capable of," said Yui to them.

"To kill is to cross the line between morality and immorality, between right and wrong, cause and consequence. Once you cross that line, you can never go back."

Suddenly, the door to the room burst open and a man came running in.

"Commander Katsuragi!" He uttered. "It's Inspector Kaji! The boy brought him back to the Geo-Front and left!"

Yui and Ritsuko were stunned to hear this.

"Alive? Or dead?" Misato asked him.

"Alive," he answered her.

Then Misato got up from the desk and vacated the office; she had to see for herself if her old boyfriend was still alive.

-x-

"What the Hell did he do to him?" Asuka questioned, looking through the observation window at Kaji as he laid there in the bed in the trauma ward.

Despite having all his limbs and with only minor scrapes and bruises, the unshaven man looked paler than usual and his expression was that of a man that had endured a lot, but broke down halfway.

Misato sat in front of him, waiting for him to speak up.

"What did he do to you?" She asked him.

"It wasn't really what he did," he responded, sounding damaged. "It was what he showed me when intimidation and his torture methods failed. He had assistance from creatures that were following his sense of faith in a better future, but his past…was painful to watch in many aspects."

"What are you talking about?"

"He showed me his past life… Every past life he had, including the ones he never lived, all at once. _"You think you know me? You think you understand me? Let me show you how wrong you are."_, he told me, and then grabbed my head. I saw him…during his best days…and his worst days."

"What do you mean?"

"I saw him get hit by a car and lose his legs, walked out on by his father, what he saw happen to his mother, and a bunch of other things that either happened to him in one life or some other. Stranded in the past where he lives to the present and then dies as a seventy-something-year-old, stranded on some Earth-like world where he defends people who are being attacked relentlessly by giants that eat and look like people, spending happy days with people he's not related to while riddled by cancer, even a life where…his family pushed him over the edge of sanity and turned him into psychopath."

"But…what if he was toying with you? What if what he showed you was just a fabrication?"

"He just learned of the concept of the multiverse, Katsuragi, and every universe within it. He couldn't fake any of it. Not this young man that regained his legs…and outran a destiny his parents tried to force on him."

And it was because of this that Kaji had told Shinji what he wanted to know…and he couldn't forget the trouble he spent trying to escape the maze or the monsters within it that aided Shinji.

-x-

_Revelations and Release_

It was by mere chance that Kaji crossed paths with Shinji's Labyrinth Tank…unguarded and up for grabs. He wasn't sure how it operated, but he was sure to get out of the maze quicker with it.

"I wouldn't try it, Mr. Kaji," went Shinji to him, stepping from around a corner in front of the Labyrinth Tank. "I just awoke from a dream based on what I can only assume so far to be the original universe that ended up getting fragmented into many, and it leaves me very…disappointed in my parents. You won't be able to ride a Labyrinth Tank. Besides, you're already as close to where you want to go, anyway. Look up at the Gate Guardian."

The unshaven man looked up at the creature and saw that it was indeed much larger than it had been what felt like two days ago.

"You can't break me, you know," he told Shinji.

"I'm not trying to break you," the boy responded. "I just want to know where Adam is. The longer you persist, the longer we reside here. The fact that you persist in keeping quiet about his whereabouts is the only reason we've spent three days here. Surely, you want to eat something other than military rations, don't you? My tastebuds have grown numb to their taste."

"You do this to torture me?"

"Torture both of us, actually."

"And the stone toilets?"

"Marble, actually. I wouldn't want to scrape my bottom, either."

"You're crazy."

"No, I'm just willing to do what I feel is the right choice with the least resistance and bloodshed. You want to stop the Angels, return to them their father. You want to fight them, you'd best be prepared for the consequences of your stubbornness and disregard for others."

"You can't always look for the easy way out, Shinji."

"Except the way I'm looking may actually do you a great favor like it may do your old flame a great favor as it would do everyone else."

"Which is what, exactly? You've devastated and tarnished NERV."

"Keep you alive so you can live past thirty, because that's the age were when you died in previous, un-lived lives. You spy for the wrong people, against the wrong people, even for the right reasons, and you drag others into your awful crusade for the truth, all you can expect is pain and death."

"Why care what happens to people? You're not even with anyone."

"Why care, indeed? I shouldn't care about any of you, yet all these memories of a life not lived by me compel me to prevent the unforgivable from ever happening to any of you. Though, I could care less for my parents, may they pay for their actions."

"You're compelled by memories?"

"And you have a thirteen-year-old, redhead femme fatale who's smitten with you. How do you explain that, huh? And you still have feelings for Ms. Katsuragi, who's probably worried about you or just wondering if I'll cross the line and kill you, which I won't. Not everything needs to makes sense if you can't wrap your head around it."

"Grr," Kaji heard a growling behind and saw a black and green creature with red eyes emerging from the wall.

"Aah!" He gasped, and then saw the giant spiders and worms that wandered throughout the maze.

"Yeah, that's what talking can do to you when you're being followed by those that make sure you're on your feet when you're not taking a break," said Shinji to him, not afraid of them. "You still get a minute head start if you still wanna persist."

Kaji then ran past him, running down a corner and then another.

The Lady of Faith appeared behind the Shadow Ghoul and asked Shinji, "Shall we go after him?"

"No," he told her. "I thank you for your aid. This isn't over…and his persistence doesn't change anything. I'll show him the drawback of keeping the truth from those that want only to preserve this healing world."

"And how will you do so?"

"If you have it, don't share it, but if you share it, then you haven't got it…and I will share my revelations with him."

He then climbed into the Labyrinth Tank and drove off after Kaji.

Kaji ran down one hall after another, trying to get to where the exit was in this maze, following the sight of the Gate Guardian.

Rumble! The ground beneath him shook, and he looked behind himself, seeing the Labyrinth Tank.

"Oh, no," he gasped, and ran faster.

He ran left, then right, then left again, hoping that the tank wouldn't be able to turn in such a confined space. But he was wrong, for the tank was able to turn, even in such tight spaces. Then, looking up ahead, the unshaven man saw the Gate Guardian's lower legs…and the end of the maze.

"Yes!" He praised and jumped towards the end of the maze.

Landing on the ground, he looked up at the Gate Guardian, who stood still as the Statue of Liberty.

The Labyrinth Tank came to a halt and Shinji climbed out.

"I escaped the labyrinth!" Kaji told him.

"Yes, you did," Shinji accepted, "but don't think that means you can just up and leave. It may all seem like a game to you, but trust me, I am not having fun toying with anyone."

"You're reaching for the impossible, Shinji. I don't know where Adam is."

"And spies are among the greatest of liars, cheaters and killers. How do I know this? Because NERV is one of the many agencies full of them, all willing to lie, cheat or kill to protect their secrets. And their secrets have secrets, all meant to hide the truth. And do you know who taught me this?"

"I'm guessing one of these guys that look like a giant action figure."

"No, Mr. Kaji, that would be you. The only good thing you're able to teach anyone that hates his roots as much as I hate mine."

Shinji then held his sword to his right side.

"So what now, you're going to use that on me?" Kaji asked him.

"Yes and no," he answered him. "As people can lie and tell the truth, just like us, I'll show you what was and what could've been."

He swung his sword in front of Kaji, hitting the ground with its blade edge, and causing a schism to open up beneath them…and they fell in.

"Aah!" Kaji screamed.

"Oh, save your screams, Mr. Kaji," Shinji told him. "This is only my past in several lifetimes that all end on the same, sour note."

FLASH! In a swirling cyclone of video-like memories, Kaji saw the interior layout of NERV HQ, only it said GEHIRN, its previous incarnation, a reddish-brunette woman that reminded him of Ritsuko Akagi, a younger version of the elder Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, a less-insane Gendo Ikari…and a little boy that was clearly Shinji as a toddler, all standing in front of an incomplete Evangelion.

"_What is a child doing here?"_ Fuyutsuki asked, looking down at Shinji.

"_He's Director Ikari's son,"_ the woman expressed, not really interested in the little boy.

"_Ikari, this isn't a daycare center."_

"_I'm sorry, Sensei, I brought him here today,"_ Kaji heard another female voice, identical to Yui Ikari's. _"It was my idea."_

"_But Yui, it's the critical experiment,"_ Fuyutsuki expressed.

"_That's why I brought him. I want him to see the bright future ahead for humanity."_

But even as Kaji turned away from one scene, another scene just like it played out in front of him, observed by none other than Shinji himself.

"It was the last time I would ever see her alive in the traditional sense," he said, as the memories continued to show the Contact Experiment turning into a scientific nightmare…and scarring a boy for life when his mother got reduced to nothing more than a faceless memory…and the aftermath being just as traumatic when the father cast him aside, either in the care of uncaring relatives…or a stranger that was just as uncaring. "Every lifetime, that one day, that single moment frozen in the abyss of time, always the same, like an endless loop…meant to drive one mad."

His past self calling out for his father, who ignored him outright, the maternal aunt that would beat him whenever he fought with her son, the uncle that would just overlook his existence. And every new day was just as worse as the previous one because the cruelty he was forced to put up with…refused to relent against him. False accusations, guilt by association, even being despised just for living, there was no end to the hurt…and all because of the parents, the family that should've been that wasn't…and would never be for a little boy that didn't have a full understanding of what had been going on around him, that didn't know what his parents were up to…and nobody willing or able to tell him or even explain in a way that he could understand.

"But each disgrace I was dealt by the ties of blood…led to different outcomes that, when different solutions were offered. This…is one of the outcomes that ended in one of the cruelest of ways that one can understand. Madness and retribution." Shinji continued as Kaji saw the boy's younger self, now older than four but less than ten, responding to the cruel words of his maternal aunt in the worst way.

He saw Shinji murder her with a knife…all the while with an expression of complete detachment. It was like the lights were on, but nobody was home. Then, years later, after being transferred out of a mental institution that only made things worse for the boy, Shinji set off on a ten-day quest to murder his father, resulting in over three-hundred lives that were no better than collateral damage. While Gendo tried to resolve the problem he saw his son as with bounty hunters and bribery, nothing the way a father should've tried to stop his son, but in the end, all he could do was face the music and be killed by his son for abandoning him…with a hailstorm of bullets.

"While I myself am not a violent soul that would resort to such methods, I must say that that universe where I went mad because of the lack of family ties and absolutely no love or friendship was afforded to me…is probably one of my favorites because everyone that hurt me got punished in the end, one way or another."

"You stabbed your own mother with a machete," Kaji pointed out, having seen the incarnation of a brutal and very angry Shinji Ikari lay down the hurt on his mother and left her for dead.

"Me? Which me are you referring to, exactly? There are many versions of me in this multiverse that seems to be the result of the original universe being fractured. Are you referring to the me that's here with you right now, showing you all of this, the me that died after punishing his family and amassing a body count of over three-hundred lives in less than ten days, or the me that came back from the dead as some servant for Heaven by a deity in exchange for a new life, a clean slate, his past sins forgiven and his soul renewed, free of the name and stain that is Ikari? You should be more specific."

"The you that turned into a heartless killer!" Kaji clarified.

"That was on the family that wronged him. They drove him to the point of no return…and no mercy."

He was about to speak up again for what his murderous incarnation had done to all those people just to get revenge on his family when a different set of images played out in front of him. They depicted Shinji being dumped on someone's doorstep by Gendo on a rainy day. The only difference with these relatives were that they weren't related to Shinji by blood at all…and the people that took him were much older than the previous relatives and already planning for their first child. As time went on, the unshaven man saw the boy lose his hair due to leukemia and have his life saved time and again by a little girl…who, after a huge calamity that had been prevented, raised a hook sword towards a disgraced Yui, as if threatening to harm her if she tried to get near Shinji, as if she had harmed him too many times to be allowed near him.

"Who is that girl with the sword?" He asked.

"I'm not really sure who she is," Shinji answered, seeing the girl send his mother away without so much as a raise in her voice. "But she certainly likes that version of me."

"I'd say that she likes you a little too much."

"To each their own."

Then, both saw a different lifetime where Shinji was shattered beyond any hope of salvation, how he strangled Asuka to death before going completely crazy and having only one goal after abandoning the former blue sphere that used to be Earth: Kill his mother for what she had done to him and everyone.

"I guess you could say that he…is the very source," Shinji told the unshaven man. "He's the primary in the multiverse. The original Shinji Ikari."

The last of the boy either ever saw was his crazed face as he went after Yui, which, despite her efforts, couldn't undo because, in many ways, she had crippled her son.

"He seems so shattered," Kaji expressed.

"Shattered, broken, damaged. Any word that describes the original as an isolated soul maimed by the one that breathed life into him is just another of calling him a ruined person that no longer cares about himself or the life he lost. All he wants is to be free from the pain that lingers and only gets worse with each lifetime a part of his soul ends up in." Shinji told him. "I should know. I feel that pain every day, deep in my own heart. It's not like I want that pain in my heart, but it's not easily undone, and I don't want to kill my parents in this life I have. I just want them to pay for their mistakes, their crimes against me and the world. But I won't be in their future when this all ends. I'm not sure what my future has in store for me, but I aim for the happiness that awaits me."

"And if you still think I'll tell you anything, you're sadly mistaken. I'm sorry you got screwed over in a few other lifetimes, but there are some things worth keeping secret about."

"Not the ones you keep…and I doubt you feel any pity for what befell my other selves in their lives. Not truly."

"Well, I doubt you care for people if you do the things you've done to NERV."

Shinji frowned and released his sword, letting it float beside him on his right.

"You think I don't care?" He questioned, floating towards Kaji. "You think I don't feel?"

He grabbed Kaji's forehead, using a method he learned from the monsters, such as the Mind Master, beneath Exodia's level to share his memories and emotions with others so that they could better understand what happened to him as though it all happened to them.

"Aaaahh!" Kaji screamed, seeing the woman in the car that ran Shinji over, the doctors that worked on him, the one that gave him the pills for his pain (which they really weren't), his uncaring aunt and uncle, the pain he felt inside the Eva, the motel fire that nearly ended him, even the joy at being returned the use of his legs. "Aaahh!"

"How'd it taste, seeing my life?" Shinji asked him, then grabbed him again.

"Aaah!" He screamed, seeing it all again, along with what happened to the psychopathic Shinji and the sickly Shinji.

BANG! The sound of gunshots as the bullets were fired by the psychotic Shinji at various people, whether they were after him before he killed his father or not.

The sight of Angels made into humans, Yui Ikari, Rei Ayanami turning into a monster of pure vengeance, the little girl that raised a sword at Yui Ikari, there was no end to the suffering this sickly incarnation of Shinji endured.

When Shinji let go of him again, Kaji fell to his knees, panting.

"Please," he uttered. "Please…no more."

"No more?" Shinji was confused. "No more of what, exactly? You've only seen three of my lives. You've seen only three of his lives. Two lives that end on sour and brutal note and one life that gives hope from the acceptance of strangers that treat each other like family. Though, the murdering one promises a new life and forgiveness from the deities that sought his aid as one of four fallen ones."

"Please! Stop!" Kaji gagged. "I'll tell you! I'll tell you where Adam is. Please, just stop!"

Shinji then grabbed his sword and cut open another rip in space, sending them back to the labyrinth.

"Tell me, then, please," he told Kaji, not wanting to put the unshaven man through more of the suffering he had experienced in his past. "Where is Adam?"

"He's…he's at the third NERV branch in Berlin, Germany where Asuka trained with Unit-02, in a secure vault that's guarded twenty-four/seven by a laser grid system and armed guards," Kaji revealed. "That's all I know."

Shinji sighed and stated, "It figures it would be somewhere in Germany. NERV is a German translation for 'nerve', after all. Thank you, Mr. Kaji. You have no idea how helpful you've been in telling me this. It's time to send you back to NERV."

He swung his sword and created another rip in space under Kaji, sending him back to NERV.

"Aaah!" Kaji screamed, falling onto the floor in Central Dogma.

-x-

"…And you told him everything he wanted to know about this supposed location of the First Angel?" Misato asked him.

"It was the truth, Katsuragi," Kaji told her. "The First Angel's in Germany at NERV's third branch. That's where he going now. He's going to dispose of Adam and put an end to the nightmare that started fifteen years ago."

-x-

"Hmm! Hmph! Ha! Hmm!" Shinji grunted, throwing punches at the Karate Man, who was teaching him other martial arts to defend himself from very human foes.

Kick! Shinji performed a backspin kick, knocking the monster off his feet.

"Your skills are progressing, young master," Karate Man expressed.

"Yes, but not enough to face a potential army in Germany," Shinji sighed. "I won't be strong enough to face a strong foe if Adam's guarded against theft and possession."

"Which is why it is never wrong of you or anyone to call upon our aid. We are of the past and future, connected to the present. The power we have from the past is the same as in the future. Should you need our help, for any reason at all, we're here for you."

Shinji nodded his acceptance of their assistance.

"Thank you," he said. "I try not to take your gifts for granted and waste them over unnecessary things. I hope that after this all is said and done, nobody else will suffer. Let's go end the nightmare."

To be continued…


End file.
